Steve the Owl's Blog

How many times have you talked to someone new to your business or looking to join your business, and you started talking to them about things like prospects, uplines, downlines, and time freedom? Depending on whether or not someone has entered the world of network marketing before, this is what such an approach might sound like to them:

How to Counteract This

Pretty much every business, trade, industry, or group has its own jargon that will seem foreign to anyone who is not familiar with it, and it almost sounds like another language. (Think the Tom Cruise Scientology video where he uses so many acronyms that no one who is not a Scientologist or familiar with their terminology can understand it.) The first thing to do is to remember that people aren’t going to be familiar with a lot of jargon in the business. For this reason, it is better to phase someone into the use of jargon, explaining its use.

Another key to avoiding jargon is to remember what jargon says sometimes. For example, the term “prospect” often conjures up images of your use of that person, not that person’s relationship with you. As my friend Michael Oliver notes, this language will not only be confusing to the person you are talking to, but it may even be seen as an insult.

Am I saying that you should never use jargon? Absolutely not. Sometimes, jargon is necessary for a subgroup to understand things and explain things in a way that is simple. However, we definitely need to understand the balance between jargon and plain language. By doing this, we will not sound like we are speaking Greek to someone who is trying to understand our industry.

One of the most important things that we can do in life is find something that we love to do, and do that for the of our lives. My friend Michael Stead recently realized that he was in the wrong industry, and he decided to go into a different industry, even though he was still enjoying success in his current industry. Rodney Dangerfield attempted to make a career as a young stand-up on the Catskills circuit, but he felt that he was a failure, so he started an aluminum siding business and settled down with a family. After nine years of failure, and thirteen years after running the aluminum siding business, he went back into stand-up and became a legend.

The Element in Common

One of the things that these two people have in common was that they realized that, even though they were doing well in something, it was not their passion. I understand that there are definitely times when we find ourselves in conditions where someone has to do something that no one else wants to do, or else no one can function, but we have to do what we can in order to find out what our true passion is. After all, we spend roughly half of our waking hours either at work or on our way to work. If we are doing that, shouldn’t we be doing something that we love?

If You Are Stuck in a Rut

Some of you reading this may be saying, “That’s a nice theory, Steve, but I don’t really have the money to invest in order to get started doing something that I really love to do.” You might not have time right now, but I would offer a piece of advice from The Other 8 Hours that I think will help someone who finds him/herself stuck in such a Catch-22: keep doing the job that you’re in now, and use your free time to grow your capital and grow your dream. When you do that, you will make it a lot easier in order to get things done and continue to meet your obligations. If this seems like a long time to you, remind yourself that, with a 40-hour work week, and 56 hours of sleep a week, that leaves 72 hours in order to make your life the kind of life you want to live. The time is there, so do what you can to make yours a life where you love what you do.

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With the Super Bowl approaching, I thought that I would deliver a commentary on Super Bowl III. As a New York Jets fan, this is definitely the Super Bowl that goes down as my favorite. Joe Namath, the Jets quarterback, led his team to the 1968 AFL Championship after dominating the AFL East, finishing a whopping four games ahead of the Houston Oilers at 11-3. In the AFL Championship game, they faced the defending AFL Champion Oakland Raiders, and won in a dramatic 27-23 game capped by a fourth-quarter pass to Don Maynard after giving up ten points in the fourth quarter to go behind 23-20.

Their opponent was the Baltimore Colts, a team that went 13-1 in the regular season before dominating the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns (the one team to beat them in the regular season) in order to earn the right to represent the NFL in the Super Bowl. The Green Bay Packers won the first two Super Bowls, dominating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl I (35-10) and the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II (33-14), and the 1968 Colts were considered to be even better, so the Jets were 18-point underdogs. Joe Namath thought otherwise, and the rest is history. Here is more information on the game:

Keep this story in mind as you look to find success others think is impossible. If you like what you read and saw, please comment below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

When it comes to TV, I am usually more of a fan of comedies (I usually prefer drama in movies because I think that the nature of commercial TV makes it harder to get involved with some stories.) but my wife tends to stick with reality shows. Our favorite reality TV show to watch together is Cake Boss. This show centers around a family of famous bakers in Hoboken, New Jersey. The title character, for lack of a better word, is Buddy Valastro, the head baker at Carlo’s Bakery. What first drew our attention about the show was the fact that they made cakes that were such works of art that you almost felt bad when you realized that they would be eaten after they delivered them to their clients. However, what amazes me so much about the “Cake Boss” has been the way that he has shown aspiring businesspeople the smart way to expand a brand.

You, Inc.

If I had a dollar for every time I saw or read that phrase online, I would be rich. Basically, “You, Inc.” is the concept that what you do establishes your personal brand. There are two dangers in this: the first danger is to spread yourself too thin, and the second is to focus too narrowly. (For example, you may really, really be interested in Spanish Baroque art from the late 16th and early 17th century, but I don’t think that there are enough people interested in the same thing to make a business or a blog work.)

Warren Buffett warns investors that one of the biggest mistakes most businesses make is trying to expand a business into an area that takes away from one’s business advantage. For this reason, a lot of people who worry about You, Inc. are very reluctant to expand their niche. However, I think that Buddy Valastro shows one of the smartest ways to do this.

Expanding the Sphere

Buddy started by working in his family’s bakery at a young age. At the age of 17, after his father’s sudden passing, Buddy took over the family business. He focused most of his efforts on building his bakery and trying to expand its reach after being known for its specialty cakes for 15 years. Two years ago, Buddy entered into a deal with TLC to show the workings of his bakery. It goes from meeting with clients all the way to the finished cake. They have had episodes where they’ve been commissioned to build cakes for customers as far away as St. Louis, and they are always amazing.

Then, in 2010, Buddy decided to expand by using something he knows a lot about (cakes) to make his own cookbook, which is based on the show and includes stories about his family. A month later, TLC premiered a spin-off, The Next Great Baker. This show follows the “reality contest” format, with ten contestants vying for a $50,000 prize and a job at Carlo’s Bakery. (The season finale aired January 24. I don’t know when it will air again, but TLC tends to show a lot of reruns, so you may still be able to catch it.) Finally, today is the premiere of Kitchen Boss, a cooking show with Buddy as the host and appearances by members of his family.

Smart Expansion

This is what makes Buddy smart when it comes to his brand. He spent 15 years establishing himself before going on TV, meaning that he really had his act together before he did so. Then, he made sure that he had success in TV (including testing the waters as a contestant on Food Network shows) before launching his two spin-offs. I don’t know what the future will hold for his newest venture, as it is the one that branches out the most from his expertise, but I think that, overall, this is a lesson in the right way to expand one’s business model.

This is the third and final post in my series on the great Czech runner Emil Zatopek. This post will focus on the third attribute that I think made Emil Zatopek such a great runner and such a great human being: his courage. By examining his courage in an example of something that he did off the track at great personal risk, you will see a fuller picture of Emil Zatopek.

It’s Good to Be Great

During and after Emil Zatopek’s rise to prominence as the greatest distance runner of his era, Zatopek was one of the most celebrated figures in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). When he first rose to prominence as a distance runner in Czechoslovakia in the 1940′s, he was offered a commission in the Czech army, and he rose to the rank of captain by the time of his achievements at the 1952 Olympic Games. After his retirement from running in 1958, he rose through the ranks, and he was still one of the most admired men in Czechoslovakia.

Czechoslovakia was under Soviet influence at the time, and like most people in higher Czech society at the time, Zatopek was a member of the Communist Party. However, he was also someone who was a bigger advocate of the democratic wing of the party than its totalitarian faction. Before his greatest triumph on the track in 1952, Emil Zatopek was nearly kicked off the Czechoslovakian national team. That year, a fellow athlete, Stanislav Jungwirth, was removed from the team because his father was a political prisoner. Zatopek, seeing the injustice in this action, formally protested to the Czechoslovakian Olympic Committee to allow Jungwirth back on the Olympic team. The team promptly responded by kicking the defending 10,000-meter champion off the team. However, the team decided to reinstate Zatopek two days after the rest of the team went to Helsinki, no doubt unwilling to accept the pressure from the people if their greatest athlete was unable to defend his title and avenge his narrow loss in the 5000 meters. Zatopek agreed, but only if Jungwirth was reinstated. Both competed in Helsinki.

Sixteen years later, during the Prague Spring, a rally to support democratic reforms in Czechoslovakia. Zatopek demanded that the Czech people be allowed to have a greater say in their country’s rule, and he continued to protest even after Soviet tanks entered Prague. He was a colonel in the army at the time, but he was demoted to private and ordered to mine uranium for six years. He was asked to speak internationally afterwards, but he was always observed by the government because they feared that he would defect. However, his love for Czechoslovakia was ultimately rewarded. In 1990, Zatopek received a formal apology, and shortly after his death in 2000, he was the unanimous choice for Czech Sporting Legend of the Century. This was quite an honor, but I think that it does not go far enough, for he is one of the greatest Legends of the Human Race of All Time.

What ways can you be more courageous?

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Great is the victory, but the friendship of all is greater.” Emil Zatopek

Yesterday, I started a series on Emil Zatopek, the great Czech runner. The first lesson that I drew from Zatopek’s career was his sheer determination that made him one of the greatest distance runners of all time. However, I don’t want anyone to read this and think that Emil Zatopek was someone with a one-track mind who didn’t truly enjoy life and live a great one. Emil Zatopek was not just a great runner, but also a great man, and his generosity also teaches us a great lesson.

More Than an Athlete

One of the other keys to understanding Emil Zatopek was his generous and gregarious nature. Before Zatopek, most runners were very secretive about their training methods (perhaps fearing that others would copy their training and outdo them), but Zatopek was very open about the nature of his training, and he freely shared information with anyone who would ask.

Unlike Paavo Nurmi (another man on the short list of “greatest runner ever” who I personally consider to be the best ever), who ran with an almost detached nature, running his races with a stopwatch in hand, Zatopek was very friendly with other runners, and in long races where there was a pack early, because of his fluency in many languages, Zatopek often struck up a conversation with other runners and acted as an interpreter in international races.

The Respect of His Peers

One of the greatest examples of the kind of respect Emil Zatopek earned in the running community came in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. At the age of 34, Zatopek knew that this would most likely be his last Olympic Games as an athlete. It had been nearly two years since his last world record, and he had decided to focus more on longer events. With no races in between the 10,000 meters and the Marathon, Zatopek decided to focus on the Marathon for his last hurrah. However, just two months before the race, as part of his training, he decided to do some strength training while carrying his wife, Dana (the 1952 gold medalist in the women’s javelin), on his back.

However, the weight and intensity was too much, and he developed a hernia. Determined to run anyway, Zatopek entered in his second (and ultimately final) Marathon. Alain Mimoun, his friend and rival, who won three silver medals behind Zatopek (the 10,000 meters in 1948 and the 5,000 and 10,000 meters in 1952), ran with his friend early on. He did so because this was his first Marathon, and he wanted to pace himself off of Zatopek. However, Zatopek knew that he just wasn’t the Zatopek of old, so he urged Mimoun to run to the pack with the lead runners. Mimoun thought he was playing mind games, but Zatopek insisted that he didn’t have it in him that day, and he didn’t want Mimoun to lose by pacing himself off of the wrong man.

Mimoun followed his advice, and finally won his first Olympic gold medal at the age of 35. However, the crowd remained in the stadium, and Mimoun stood near the finish line. He waited for four minutes and 34 seconds. At this time, Emil Zatopek finally entered the stadium, finishing sixth. He was so well respected that as he entered the stadium, everyone chanted “ZAT-O-PEK! ZAT-O-PEK! ZAT-O-PEK!” as the great runner crossed the finish line in his final Olympic race. The first person to greet him was Mimoun, and the two saluted each other.

True Generosity

However, the biggest example of Emil Zatopek’s generosity came in 1966 after a meeting with Ron Clarke of Australia. Ron Clarke was considered by many to be the greatest distance runner to never win an Olympic gold medal. (I would put him fourth behind Nurmi, Zatopek, and Haile Gebresallassie of Ethiopia.) Clarke broke 17 world records, including 15 in 1965 alone and 12 of those in the span of 44 days. However, his best Olympic result was a bronze medal in the 10,000 meters in 1964. In the Commonwealth Games, Clarke entered in 1962, 1966, and 1970. In 1962, he won the silver in the 3 mile race. In 1966, he won the silver in the 3 mile and 6 mile race. In 1970, he won the silver in the 10,000 meters.

Many would argue that this is because Clarke is a choke artist, but Clarke was operating under the assumption that an athlete never truly peaks, and he tried to maintain his fitness year-round. Clarke tried his hardest at these major events, but he was always beaten by runners who were not his equal. Clarke visited Zatopek in Prague, and when they went to the ariport, Zatopek handed him a package and told him, “Look after this; you deserve it.” When Clarke got onto the plane, he opened it. Inside the package was Emil Zatopek’s gold medal from the 10,000 meters in Helsinki!

These are just two examples of the generosity of Emil Zatopek, and part of the reason why he is still remembered so fondly more than a decade after his passing. What are you doing today to make sure that people will remember you tomorrow?

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In the world of distance running, my favorite runner ever has to be Emil Zatopek. Known as The Czech Beast for his unconventional running style that some have likened to a man having a heart attack, Zatopek was an international runner in the 1940′s and 50′s who won four Olympic gold medals, including becoming the only man to win the 5000 meters, 10,000 meters, and Marathon in the same Olympic games (1952). Zatopek is known as one of the greatest distance runners of all time (I rate him second only behind Paavo Nurmi, the first Flying Finn who won nine Olympic gold medals in the 1920′s and set 22 world records.) Zatopek also set 18 world records, including becoming the first person to run 10,000 meters (6.2 miles) in under 29 minutes (1954) and the first to run 20,000 meters in under an hour (1951). (His 20,000-meter hour is even more impressive because at the time only five people including Zatopek had ever run 10,000 meters in under 30 minutes, and Zatopek did it twice with no break in between.) However, what truly set Zatopek apart was not his form, or his gold medals, or his world records, but his iron will to be the greatest distance runner in the world.

Not Talent, but Determination

Emil Zatopek would have been the first to admit that he was not the greatest natural athlete in the world. He started his running career at the age of 19 while working at a shoe factory, he was entered into a 1500 meter race. Out of 100 people there, he finished second, but people noticed his potential, and he was encouraged to run in more races. Ever willing to experiment in order to become better, Zatopek insisted that he knew how to run slow, but he wanted to learn how to run faster. So, in order to do so, he started by running 100 meters hard and 100 meters easy 15 times. His friends pointed out that 100 meters was a sprinting distance, and at the time, distance runners didn’t practice sprints, but long, steady runs. Zatopek insisted that running it 15 times would actually be 3000 meters (1.9 miles) and it wouldn’t be a sprint any more.

Eventually, as Zatopek transitioned from the 5000 meters (3.1 miles) into adding more long distances to his training, he started adding longer repetitions and more repetitions, until he did a brutal training load of 20X200m, 40X400m, and 20X200m, for a total of an astonishing 24,000 meters (14.9 miles) of fast running (with breaks of only 200 meters in between each run) on a regular basis, and occasionally running as many as 80 repeats of 400 meters.

1948 Olympics

Zatopek finished fifth in the 5000 meters in the European championships in 1946, and he had run some great races in 1948, but he came to the Olympic Games in London as an underdog. However, he was determined to leave a champion. Knowing that the Olympic record pace for the 10,000 meters was 71 seconds per lap, he had a friend sit in the stands with two shirts. If Zatopek ran the lap in 71 seconds or less, his friend would hold the white shirt. If he went more than 71 seconds, his friend would hold up a red shirt as a sign that he needed to pick up his pace. Zatopek not only shattered the Olympic record by nearly 19 seconds despite a soggy track with a time of 29:59.6, but he won by 47.8 seconds, beating Alain Mimoun of France by over 300 meters. He tried to double in the 5000, and he was 50 meters back at the bell (in track, a bell or gun sounds when there is one lap left in the race). Zatopek pushed as hard as he could, refusing to give up, but he finished second by two meters, losing by only one-fifths of a second. (Until the 1950′s, races were times by the fifth of a second, rather than the tenth or the hundredth, which has been the standard since 1976.)

1952 Olympics

The Helsinki Olympics was Emil Zatopek’s finest moment. First, he returned to the 10,000 meters, hoping to become the first person to repeat as 10,000 meter champion, and only the second to ever win it twice. (Nurmi won in 1920 and 1928, interrupted by Ville Ritola, also of Finland, in 1924. Nurmi was not in the 10,000 meters, and it was long rumored that he was so angered by being left out of this race by the Finn Olympic Committee that he ran the 10,000 meters on the practice track at the same time as the final in what would have been a world record.) Again, Zatopek ran against the clock, setting an Olympic world record of 29:17, beating Mimoun by 15.8 seconds. Then, determined to avenge his London loss, Zatopek was fourth at the bell. He tried to sprint with one lap to go, but it did no good. However, with 200 meters left, the other runners started to get tired, and Zatopek made his move, beating Mimoun for the third time, this time by 0.8 seconds.

If that wasn’t enough, he decided just for fun to run the Marathon. He had never run the Marathon before, so before the race, he introduced himself to Jim Peters of England, the world record holder in the Marathon. He did so to pace himself off of Peters. At 15 kilometers, Zatopek asked Peters if he was running too fast. Peters responded in jest that he was running too slow. Zatopek, however, didn’t realize that he was joking and accelerated. By the midway point, Peters collapsed, and Zatopek set the Olympic record for the Marathon and become the only person of either gender to win all three of the longest distance races in the same Olympics, a feat that may never be equaled.

Here is a brief documentary about Zatopek:

Zatopek did this not because he was great, but because he wanted to become better. What part of your life can use some determination?

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I’ve thought a lot about the question of setting goals. This was driven in part by a recent read through the personal development classic Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I’ve seen other writers, such as Debbie Ford in The Best Year of Your Life argue that a desire for a result without specific goals and planning is nothing more than wishful thinking.

What is a True Goal

I think that this can be seen by seeing what a goal is not. In the world of business, a goal is not “I want to make a lot of money.” That is because it is a vague ambition rather than a driving force that leads to a plan of action. An example of a goal is “I want to make $100,000 a year or more within the next five years.” By setting a goal this way, there is a concrete end result, and this will help you learn the steps needed to reach the final goal of a six-figure salary within that period of time.

Another important aspect to a goal involves intermediate goals if the goal seems relatively distant. Using our current example, if you are currently making $10,000 a year, and you want to make $100,000 a year within five years, a good example of an intermediate goal is “I want to make $30,000 this year, and I want to make $75,000 within three years.”

Another key to goal setting is that it must be realistic. Like Dr. Evil in The Spy Who Shagged Me when he asks for $100 billion in 1969 money, only to be told that that is like asking for “100 billion kajillion dollars,” we must do something that is not only realistic, but something that we believe we can do. For example, if your vision is for a six-figure salary, don’t start talking about a seven-figure salary until the vision is there.

The How

There is an argument among goal setters as to how specific one should be in the method of goal setting and affirmations. In a recent post, my friend Coach Freddie pointed out a technique that I thought was an interesting way to make the best of both worlds while goal setting: specify how you want to do something or what you want, but add “or something better” or some variant thereof. (For example, in my affirmations about wealth building, after reading his post, I added the phrase “or more” to each affirmation when discussing both income and net worth.)

Making Your Statement

Once you have your basic goal ready, look at the what and the how, and state your belief that these things happen, and write these on an index card, and repeat it both first thing in the morning and last thing at night until you can literally visualize your goals, and you will have a goal statement that will help you find the discipline to put a plan in order to have the success that you deserve.

Have you ever had to deal with a major change in life? Has that change ever been frustrating? I think that all of us can say that we have encountered the same thing. (There was a joke in the military that there were three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way. The Army way was different because it meant doing something about 10-15 different ways before settling on the wrong way.) The book Who Moved My Cheese? tells the story of what happens when we fight change, rather than figure out how to make change work.

Going Through the Maze

The story involves two mice and two tiny people who go through a maze every day to find cheese. For the longest time, the cheese is in the exact same place every day. The mice go about the search in the same way every day, but as the tiny people realize that it is always in the same place, they start getting up later and later before they go get the cheese.

The Cheese Is Moved

Then, one day, the scientist moves the cheese from one corridor to the other. The mice continue to do what they always do and look for the cheese. However, the tiny people begin to complain about the fact that the cheese is now gone, and they feel ripped off by that fact. As time goes on, they stop eating completely, and one of them finally realizes that there might be new cheese somewhere else. He finds it, but the other gets to the brink of starvation before he changes his approach and starts getting the new cheese, which tasted better and existed in more abundance than before.

Practical Lesson

It has been said that the one constant in life is change. There are times when the change may seem unfair, but the reality is that there is a new world with a new way of doing things, and we must keep up in order to survive and thrive. So, the question is whether you adjust to change or become ruined by it.

I have read a lot of books over the last few months about the subject of personal development. One of the most unique has definitely been The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. This was a book that actually began as a series of pamphlets in 1926 talking about wealth creation and debt reduction. Eventually, some of the best-known pamphlets were collected into a book. It is a short read. The version that I have is about 85 pages long, and it consists of different parts: parables set in ancient Babylon where a man who build a large fortune talks about how he learned to build wealth; his work for the king of Babylon to teach wealth creation when he finds his kingdom in the midst of gross inequalities with most struggling after building projects ended; and “archaeological finds” detailing how a man was able to get rid of his debt and use that money to build his wealth.

Five Laws of Gold

Perhaps the most famous element of The Richest Man in Babylon is a collection of “five laws of gold.” The first law of gold (paraphrased) states that gold comes to one who saves at least one-tenth of his/her money and invests it. (The language of the book was gender-specific, but I feel that gender-neutral language is appropriate in describing the laws in this day and age since I am not quoting the author directly.) Combined, the five laws talk about ways to avoid foolish investments that will cost money in the long run, and they help one get ideas for the need to budget.

Seven Remedies for a Lean Purse

Also included are tales of how to remedy a lean purse, which cover a lot of the same material as the five laws of gold. While the five laws of gold may be more familiar, this is my favorite portion of the book, because it shows these steps in action. One of them, when talking about wise investments, talks about investing with a brick-maker in a diamond purchase from Nineveh. The money is eventually lost when it turns out that the brick-maker didn’t know how to tell the difference between a diamond and glass. This shows the importance of not only investing wisely, but knowing who to trust when listening to advice. After all, you wouldn’t want to talk to someone who never owned a stock about which stocks to pick, or investing in real estate if he/she has never done so.

Getting out of Debt

As someone who is still in grad school, and who will almost certainly be looking at a total bill of at least $100,000 in student loans, I found this part of the story the most helpful. There are some who try to borrow Shakespeare’s maxim, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” but I think that there is good debt and bad debt. To me, good debt is debt that one accrues in order to serve a bigger purpose later that will result in greater returns, such as buying a house or getting a loan to start a business. However, there are times when we find ourselves with no money and bills that come due, so we have to borrow for these short-term needs. If these problems last, the debt can be overwhelming.

So, what should we do? Keep borrowing more money and just accept our fate? I think that is the wrong answer, and Clason shows a way out of debt that is practical and helpful. Of course, in the parable, most of the loans come in the form of debt to friends and family, so this is a little bit different than the loans that so many of us have. However, he recommends setting aside 20% of income for the purposes of debt reduction, prorating each payment to the creditor based on the total debt. For example, if I have a debt of $5000, and I owe Jim $2000, Sally $2000, and Bob $1000, and I can set $500 a month (these numbers are only meant to be hypothetical to illustrate the point) for debt reduction, I should give $200 each to Jim and Sally (40% of the total monthly payment because I owe each of them 40% of the debt) and $100 to Jim (20% of the total debt). In this way, the bill can be paid in ten months and that money can then be used for other elements of building assets, such as setting aside money for a rainy day.

The parables in this book are as timeless as they are easy to learn. So, if you would like to learn ways to make your income work for you to get out of the hamster wheel that is paycheck-to-paycheck living, I would be hard-pressed to find a better beginning lesson than this one to get started in making a plan.