Steve the Owl's Blog

Over the weekend, I watched the movie Young Einstein with my wife. If you have never seen the movie, or it sounds like something you may have heard of, but can’t quite place it, Young Einstein was the first movie by Australian filmmaker Yahoo Serious and it re-imagined the life of Albert Einstein as he formulated his most famous theories (as well as inventing rock and roll). I will admit that there are parts of the movie that are obviously dated (the movie was made in 1988, and released internationally the next year), but I think that there are some elements of the movie that not only stand the test of time, but they teach us something about life and the power of imagination today.

An Imaginative Movie for an Imaginative Man

Albert Einstein was born in Germany and lived most of his early life in Germany and Switzerland. Einstein was a late bloomer, failing math as a young man, not learning to speak until the age of three or tie his shoes until the age of twelve. However, once he got working, he really caught on quickly. Inspired by a daydream where he rode a beam of light toward the end of the universe at the age of 26 (while working at a patent office), Einstein began working on the special theory of relativity, the work that would make his name synonymous with “genius” for the next century, even though his ideas were seen as ridiculous when he first proposed them.

Einstein never took himself too seriously, and Young Einstein, while intentionally getting a lot of facts wrong (For example, I’m pretty sure that E=mc2 was not a result of “splitting a beer atom.”) definitely got the rebellious spirit of Einstein right. The movie shows how people thought he was crazy (even getting locked up in a mental asylum with other scientists) and how he just couldn’t get the hang of the doldrums of working at the patent office. However, when the time came, he truly changed the world, and he did so in a generous spirit.

In some ways, I think that an iconoclast like Yahoo Serious was perfect for this role. With his wild hair and joie de vivre, Yahoo Serious plays someone who gets bored on his parents’ apple farm (where he never quite fits in), and he starts using his spare time to think about the universe, as evidenced by falling on a seesaw with a crate of apples on the other side. When the crate hits him on his head, he exclaims, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction!” As someone from the world of academia, I really appreciate the wonder at which Serious shows Einstein’s joy at discovering his theories.

In addition, this movie took advantage of the media of its time, experimenting with the format of the music video, as evidenced by this clip of the movie, a three-and-a-half minute montage set to “Great Southern Land” by Icehouse, turning the song and the movie into a love song to his native Australia. As you can see below, it holds up well 23 years later:

How has imagination powered you to success?

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I love reading. Because I love reading, one of the things that I like to talk about on my blog is a book that I read that I think has some valuable content. Also, when I look for affiliate programs, most of my affiliate programs involve books in one way or another. This has led to an ethical question for me: knowing the 90/10 principle, should I do book reviews if I have an affiliate link somewhere but don’t plug the affiliate programs in the review?

Judging Conflicts of Interest

The normal code of conduct for promoting an affiliate product is to disclose the financial relationship in the blog post. However, what if there are no links to any product at all, but a mention of the product? This is where I’m not really sure what the proper protocol is. Anyone who has an affiliate program knows that where there is no link, there is no money. Therefore, if someone doesn’t link to a product that he/she uses, but a link does exist somewhere, what is the proper ethical rule?

My personal assumption is that disclaimers should only be used when there is a link posted. However, there may be others who would seem shocked when I write a review about a product that I have an affiliate link to where I don’t post the link. My thought is that I want to give some reviews without providing a link because I believe that this demonstrates to you, the reader, that my primary goal with these book reviews (whether there is an affiliate link or not) is to let you know something that I’ve found helpful, not whether or not I turn a profit. That being said, I understand that there are other people who have a different line.

What do you consider proper ethics for book reviews where no link is posted? Does posting some book reviews with an affiliate link while not providing links to others change the relationship between the reviewer and the reader?

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Visualization of and Belief in the Attainment of Desire: The Second Step toward Riches Napoleon Hill

Hi, everyone. Welcome to my blog for the third chapter in my study on Think and Grow Rich, the seminal personal development book by Napoleon Hill. Last week, we covered “Desire,” the first step towards riches. Each chapter works as a sequence to developing the tools and principles necessary to develop the mindset and the work ethic necessary to achieve success. After one has a true desire for something, the next step is believing that these things can actually happen.

Building Your Faith

As someone who has spent the better part of the past decade studying religion in one way or another formally, I think that it is very interesting what Napoleon Hill has to say about the cultivation of faith. He argues that faith is something that religious figures have been arguing is necessary through the decades, but he points out that there are very little sermons on how to develop faith. In this, I think that he is onto something. When we only talk about faith as something that we should have, it makes faith feel like something that we are either predestined to have or not to have. While desire is the thing that will get us started, faith is the thing that helps us focus our efforts.

For this reason, this chapter includes the Self-Confidence Formula as a way to boost one’s faith in the ability to meet one’s goals. It is as follows:

First, demand action toward the goal.

Second, concentrate for thirty minutes every day on thoughts about the kind of person we want to be.

Third, devote ten minutes daily to autosuggestion for self-confidence.

Fourth, never stop trying to work toward one’s goal of the primary purpose in life.

Fifth, always act in justice in the pursuit of financial gain.

Does It Work?

In 1900, Charles Schwab (no relation to the famous stockbroker) went into a meeting with several titans of finance to convince them of the need to rethink their ideas about profits and prices. This was the time before the great “trust buster” Teddy Roosevelt ascended to the Presidency, so the method of fortune by the robber barons was to consolidate all production and jack up the prices once they established a monopoly. However, the manager of the steel mills of Andrew Carnegie had an idea that was worth hundreds of millions of dollars: instead of using their power to drive the price up, why not use that power to drive the price down? Schwab knew that it wouldn’t work if he couldn’t get the cooperation of the major players, and as a result of one dinner speech, US Steel was born, and it produced $600 million in profit (easily worth tens of billions in today’s dollars).

How has faith given you the strength to fight for your goals?

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“To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1

As most followers of this blog know, I am a huge fan of the work of Jim Rohn, one of the greatest personal development thinkers of the last 50 years. Recently, I read a short but powerful book by this late, great leader who has helped so many people: The Seasons of Life. I think that what makes this book so powerful is the way that it shows the reader how there are different times that have different challenges, and that each challenge can be an opportunity for success or for failure.

Life as Harvest

I think that Jim Rohn’s best analogy in the book is a comparison of life and business to a farmer who plants crops. This extended analogy comes from thoughts about each of the seasons. Think of planting time. It comes in the spring, and it is very brief. Anyone who has ever read The Farmer’s Almanac knows that there are very specific times when each crop is harvested. There are cold-weather crops like barley, and warm-weather crops like wheat and corn. If you plant these crops at the wrong time, the ground is not fitting for them, and they will not survive.

However, you can’t just plant the crop and let it go. In the summer, you have to tend the crops. This is often hard work, and it is work that will not necessarily see results right away, but it is vital to any success that one will have. The hard work is rewarded in the fall with the harvest. This is a time of celebration, and a time of plenty. It is also the time when all of the hard work pays off. Finally, winter is the time when one must be frugal and prepare for the coming spring.

In many ways, this is just like life. For those of us in the network marketing industry, when we talk to a potential business partner, there is a temptation to harvest in the fall, when it is really the season to plant the seed. After all, how can you reap a harvest if there were no seeds planted? Unlike the weather, however, it is not always obvious which season your business or business relationships are in.

How can you tell which season your business or business relationships are in?

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One of the biggest stereotypes in the world of driving is the idea that men will never, under any circumstances, stop and ask for direction, or admit to being lost, even though it is obvious to everyone that they are off course. Fittingly, I’ve read about Henry Ford both as a positive example of determination (for insisting on a block V-8 engine) and an example of stubbornness that led to defeat (for refusing to update the Model T until years after GM overtook Ford as the world’s largest automobile manufacturer). So, this made me think about the nature of adjusting course and whether one should stand firm or decide that it is better to do something else.

When Persistence is Better

I think that it is obvious that there are times when persistence is the better course. As Jeff Olson reminds us in The Slight Edge, there is a considerable amount of time where the success curve and the failure curve are close together. In the world of business in particular, and network marketing in general, there is going to be a time where the business is very rough. Since, unfortunately, there are a lot of people who enter network marketing due to promises of quick success and they aren’t prepared for what happens if they aren’t one of the overnight success stories (although if they were honest, most of the “overnight successes” got their numbers so quickly because they had already been working in the business world for years and already came to their business with a huge Rolodex) and many go away because they don’t have the resources to weather the storm. This usually signals someone who probably quit too soon.

When It is Time to Change

I think that one of the most important indicators that it might be time to change is when the agreement changes. If, for example, someone goes from a compensation plan that is fair and equitable to one that only exists to minimize the pay distribution. Most companies in the world of network marketing have a set percentage of the revenues to its distributors. (For example, my primary company has a payout of 59%, and most companies are in the 50-70% range.) Ironically, one of the ways that you can tell that this is happening is when the payout plan changes and it is accompanied by an increase in bonuses, because this usually means that there is something that is more complicated, and there are fewer people receiving any money at all.

Another realization that it is time to move on is if there is no longer any confidence in the business model or product. For example, if someone sells cosmetics and decides to embrace an ascetic lifestyle that shuns make-up, it is probably a good time to find something else to do. Or, the technology could change and it wouldn’t make sense to stay in the company. One example would be one that I’ve talked about as an analogy of holding on to the past is that I wouldn’t want to be the last person who owned stock in a kerosene lamp company when electric lights caught on.

How do you know when it is time to adjust course in life and business?

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One of the things that is the most interesting to me as we work to meet our goals is just how many ideas that we come across that are the most successful end up being the counter-intuitive ideas.

This got me thinking about the nature of success. One of the things that is the saddest to me about success is how few people truly enjoy it in their lives. Depending on the metric, I have heard that the general rate of success in life is anywhere from 1-10%. In other words, at best, if you are in a room with ten people, nine will not be reaching their goals or living their dreams. Earl Nightingale and Jeff Olson have argued that the number is 5%. Napoleon Hill argued that it is about 2%. Most of us in network marketing know that it is 3%. The vast majority of businesses fail, and we have reached a point in the United States where an overwhelming majority are in debt.

Who Do You Follow?

I’ve heard it argued many times that people tend to model those who they surround themselves with. I think that is true to some extent. (However, I think that this fails to take into account those who seem to travel in multiple social circles.) To what extent it is true, I think that it is a question of things that we have been raised with. We have been told time and time again that we should save for a rainy day, and a lot of people who counsel others on finances and wealth building will tell them something like that. However, very few people do. I don’t think that this is of a case of laziness or stupidity, but a natural reaction to seeing shorter-term goals as more immediate than long-term goals. However, I think that we can all agree that the long-term goals are the ones that get us to where we want to be. If we don’t have that, we never really end up getting anywhere.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who embody the parody presented by Stephen Colbert, someone who goes completely on his gut, and completely ignores logical arguments. This leads people to a lot of bumper-sticker ideas in life. Unfortunately, a lot of the things that we need to do in life aren’t that simple, and insisting that they should be means that we will neglect the complex but vital things that we need to do.

This leads me back to the nature of counter-intuitive advice. (The best example I’ve ever heard or read was Stephen Covey’s focus on things that are important but not urgent if we want to succeed in life.) I think that the reason why things seem to counter-intuitive are because they are things that are the opposite of what we see others around us doing. Working toward long-term interest rather than short-term interest is counter-intuitive, and most people don’t do it. Being generous rather than hoarding in order to create wealth is counter-intuitive, and most people don’t do it. However, when you focus on looking for things that do work rather than what everyone else is doing, these things won’t be so counter-intuitive any more.

What are some counter-intuitive plans that have worked for you?

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Today is Presidents’ Day here in the United States, and thinking about our Presidents reminded me of a very important lesson in the world of business and life in general: you have to know the rules in order to win the game. How many times have we seen someone do something and end up losing because they weren’t aware of the rules, or they acted as though the rules were different.

A Big Favorite

In 2007, the real question surrounding the Democratic Party Presidential primaries was not who would win the nomination, but when the other candidates would drop out of the race. Regardless of how you feel about the candidates for the 2008 election, I think it is safe to say that just about everyone thought that Hillary Clinton was the runaway favorite to win the nomination easily. She had solid name recognition, a lot of contacts from her husband’s successful campaigns for President, she did very well in most of the debates, and the people who were opposed to her candidacy could not find one candidate to put their energy into.

The two biggest nominating contests are usually the first two: the Iowa caucuses and the new Hampshire primaries. Because of the quirky nature of the caucuses (People come to their precincts and there are parts of the room where supporters of a candidate congregate. Any candidate who receives 15% of the vote in that precinct gets to elect delegates to the county convention. The same process continues a few weeks later when the county delegates nominate to the congressional district, and finally, the state convention where the delegates are finally tallied.), New Hampshire tends to get more attention.

However, in 2004, John Kerry made a huge come-from-behind in Iowa, coming from a distant third in polls a week out to a solid win, and he used this win to give him momentum going into New Hampshire, where he got a big win, and never looked back, winning the nomination and all but three nominating contests (John Edwards won South Carolina, Wesley Clark won Oklahoma, and Howard Dean was the favorite son winning Vermont). So, this time, none of the major candidates dared ignored Iowa for fear of momentum ruining their chances.

A Shocker

Going into the primary season, John Edwards was considered the favorite to win in Iowa. He finished second in 2004 and he’d spent a lot of time in Iowa after the Presidential election, and Hillary Clinton didn’t have a lot of experience in Iowa because Bill Clinton and all of the other candidates largely skipped Iowa because home-state legend Tom Harkin was running for President in 1992, and he had no primary opponent in 1996. Remember how I said the caucus system is quirky? Well, what I explained earlier was only the first round of the Iowa caucuses. After the initial tally, and the threshold is announced, the people in the room have two hours to convince each other to change their votes. For this reason, the supporters of the candidates who receive less than 15% in any given room are very important.

When the final votes were counted, Obama won 38% of the vote to 30% for Edwards, 29% for Clinton, 2% for Bill Richardson (who’d polled as high as 12% earlier that week), 1% for Joe Biden, and less than 1% for Christopher Dodd. Biden and Dodd dropped out after that. Richardson lost all momentum in New Hampshire, only got 5%, and dropped out. Edwards dropped out two weeks later. However, the first two states produced a split. Barack Obama won Iowa, and Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire. For months, the race was largely back and forth, and ultimately, Barack Obama won the nomination on his way to the presidency.

Why Rules Matter

When all was said and done, the difference was in the rules. There were 14 states that used caucuses in the primaries, and Obama won all but one. (He even won Texas, which had a split system, despite Clinton winning the primary the same day.) He had a huge winning streak where he won 11 straight nominating contests, most of them caucuses. The Clinton campaign tried to hold their fire for Ohio and Texas and hoped that momentum would change the day. When Obama still led, they complained about the delegate process. While Obama won a majority of the pledged delegates by only 123 out of nearly 3400, he won 154 more delegates out of the caucuses than Clinton did.

So, this got me thinking. In the world of network marketing, there are several different type of compensation packages (i.e., rules). Some of them work better for people who are already doing a lot; others work better for people who can find a few people to help them; still others work better for those who can build big networks. You can complain about a compensation plan all you want, but the best thing to do if you don’t think it is fair or suitable to your skills is to look for one that is.

What have you found when you looked at life and its rules?

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“It is not our abilities, but our choices, that determine what kind of person we are.” Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

I have been thinking a lot lately about what someone does in his/her spare time. There are some who argue that this is the time when we should rest and take it easy, and there are others who argue that this is potentially our most important time in working to build our future and meet our goals.

In many ways, I agree with those who argue from the second point of view. I understand using time to relax and take it easy once in a while, but far too often, people tend to use too much of that time and get stuck in the same place every day, or it would be more accurate to say that it seems like they aren’t moving, but they are going farther and farther behind. This got me thinking about the nature of recreation and I posted a video talking about a couple of game that I like to play with my wife, The Game of Life and The Great Piggybank Adventure:

What games to you like to play in your spare time to teach yourself and build toward your goals?

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Hi, everyone. One of the things that I think is very important in the world of business and personal development is inspiration. One of the leaders of the world of inspiration is Simple Truths. My favorite part of Simple Truths is their set of gift books. This Christmas, I got a set of five of the books from the Simple Truths family. Each book has beautiful pictures and great lessons about life and personal development.

My personal favorite is 212: The Extra Degree. In each of the lessons in the book, it shows how there is a tiny differences that make the differences between success and failure. One of these examples is the amount of time separating winning an Olympic gold medal and those who don’t even win a medal at all: less than one second for sprinters and events up to 800 meters. Another example (not mentioned in the book) is the famous monologue by Kevin Costner’s character Crash Davis in Bull Durham about the difference between a .250 hitter (a mediocre result) and a .300 hitter (a great hitter) being just one more hit a week.

This weekend, Simple Truths is offering a special for those looking for personal development. Through President’s Day (February 21), Simple Truths is offering free shipping for any order regardless of price. (NOTE: Please assume that there is an affiliate relationship with the company listed.) If you would like to find out more about the books, pictures, jewelry, and other items Simple Truths has to offer, please click on the link below:

The Starting Point for All Achievement: The First Step Toward Riches-Napoleon Hill

Welcome to my weekly series on Napoleon Hill’s classic book Think and Grow Rich. Last week, we talked about the fact that “Thoughts Are Things.” That chapter was more of an introduction to make people aware of the power of thoughts. I say this because there are thirteen steps to success in this book that Napoleon Hill discovered while interviewing some of the top business minds of his day. What I think is interesting about the work of Think and Grow Rich is that it shows success as a sequential work that builds on itself to help you reach your goals.

You’ve Got to Know What You Want to Get It

This is one of the things that I think is something that seems obvious upon looking at it, but how can we figure out where we are going if we don’t know where we want to go? There is a famous dialogue in Alice in Wonderland where Alice asks the cat which we should go. The cat asks her where she wants to go, and she says that she just wants to go SOMEWHERE. The cat tells her, “Oh, you’re sure to do that, if you only walk long enough.”

However, this is what is so different about the idea of desire. This is where you figure out what you truly, truly want in life. If you want to make money, the first step is to figure out how much money. If you have vague ambitions of starting a business, you won’t really find a business that really makes you shine. However, if you truly know what you want to do, you will be able to figure out the path to get there and the first step to take.

That being said, did you know that you can build your desire? As mentioned last week, Edwin Barnes made his fortune because he had a true desire to go into business with Thomas Edison, and he made success the only option. Helen Keller was blind, deaf, and mute, so people of her day would not have been surprised to see her languish in her own world, but her teacher Anne Sullivan was able to find strength through Helen Keller’s desire, and she became the first deaf and blind person to receive a bachelor’s degree in the United States.

Do you want to turn that desire into something tangible? If you do, this chapter offers a six-step plan to do so:

1) determine the exact amount you desire (but, as my friend Coach Freddie reminds us, always add “or something better” or “or more” to allow yourself to be more open to the fact that your imagination may be holding you back)

2) determine exactly what you want to give for the money

3) establish a deadline to possess the money

4) create a definite plan, beginning immediately to put it into action, whether you are ready or not

5) write a plan/vision statement (more on this in chapter four)

6) read that statement aloud at the beginning and end of your day.

What are the most unlikely places you have received desire? How did your life change when you went from wish to desire?

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