Volume III • Number 11 • November 2015 • $97
Where’s the Gold in your Data?
MODEL
Airplanes? expert interview with
MANNY’S BLOG: WHY IS A RAVEN LIKE A BLOGGING DESK?
The Greatest OBSTACLE to SUCCESS in Adult Life
Austin Walsh The Boy Wonder
November 2015
ABOUT STEVE
About the Publisher, Steve Sipress If you want to grow your business slowly – or just maintain it as is, you’ll have to do that all on your own. But if you want dramatic growth in your income and lifestyle, then Steve’s out-of-the-box and time-tested strategies and tactics could be the keys to your dreams. You can benefit from Steve’s coaching experience and expertise to revolutionize your business – yes, even in this challenging economy – at one of the many in-person entrepreneur events he hosts, OR from the comfort of your own home anywhere in the world. You can also learn basic and advanced direct response marketing strategies and tactics from 150+ hours of video instruction, plus use any or all of Steve’s multi-million-dollar, proven “done-for-you” marketing materials at SSSMarketingUniversity.com. That website has been called The Single Most Powerful Client Attraction Program Available Anywhere, and you could be using it to skyrocket your income anytime you want, 24/7, along with hundreds of other sharp, successful business leaders. If you’re just starting up your new business, you’ll want to take advantage of all of Steve’s training, guidance and resources at NewBusinessAcademy.org. Steve is a successful and award-winning serial entrepreneur, who has created and built nearly a dozen successful companies of his own, and he can help you do the same – more quickly and easily than you’ve ever imagined. In fact, you can immediately use plenty of his simple and powerful strategies and tactics that work especially well in this current frustrating economy. You can discover the basics of Steve’s powerful “The WOW! Strategy™: How To Solve All Of Your Marketing Problems” by watching a short video at www.SteveSipress.com. Steve is a celebrated author, speaker and business coach who has established profitable businesses and helped thousands of ambitious and aggressive business owners, entrepreneurs, executives and sales professionals all around the world. He has written numerous newsletters and articles on sales and marketing for a wide range of publications and has appeared on radio and television, helping millions of people along the way. For over five years, Steve was the #1 “Dan Kennedy Certified No B.S. Business Advisor,” and was Runner-Up out of 25,000 members for 2010 GKIC Marketer Of The Year. If you want the very best, hard-hitting, no-nonsense, caring advice and help you can get, then “Straight-Talk Steve” could be exactly what you and your business need most. Whether you’re a current or future business superstar, Steve can help you get exactly where you want to go as quickly, easily and powerfully as YOU want – with massive results both short-term and long-term.
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www.SteveSipress.com www.SSSMarketingUniversity.com www.NewBusinessAcademy.org www.Facebook.com/SmallBizHelp www.Twitter.com/SteveSipress
When we first started, I was terribly in debt and we were just a few months away from bankruptcy. We started seeing a boost right away in our business, we took what Steve’s given me and we just started implementing and implementing, and it’s just totally transformed my business. Steve has helped me with my laser focus, he helps me implement, he’s taken my business to a whole new level. We went from a half a million dollars to a million dollars in two years. It’s just an incredible experience to know that where you think you’re just dead and things are horrible, to now anything is possible. I can see taking this to a whole new three or four types of businesses -- it’s going to be huge. Steve is all business, he is an unbelievably smart, brilliant man. I can’t say enough about him. Everything he’s told me, I’ve made so much money it doesn’t matter what it costs. They don’t make enough money in this world that somebody could pay me so I would stop listening to Steve. Steve is the exact reason why I have a retirement fund now. It’s probably illegal how much fun I’m having!”
Jon Bockman
Owner, Bockman’s Auto Care Sycamore, Illinois
MODEL AIRPLANES?
November June2015 2015
Model Airplanes? By Steve Sipress
My beautiful wife Michele and I recently flew from Chicago to Scottsdale, Arizona. I went to connect with old friends and make some new ones surrounding the two-day Genius Network Annual Event, which I first attended three years ago and carries with it an attendance fee of $10,000 per extremely successful entrepreneur for non-members of the group (which numbered approximately 100 this year).
Michele spent her time visiting with her sister, who had moved to Scottsdale about six years ago. We chose to endure the indignity of commercial airline travel as our preferred means of transportation for the trip, which gave me plenty of material upon which to base this article… Do you remember? It wasn’t long ago that almost the entire airline industry was suffering record losses in the wake of 9-11, with ever-rising fuel costs and evershrinking profit margins. Today they are enjoying the polar opposite, with soaring revenues and record profits.
Here are some of their business practices that all business owners can model for their own success…
Under-Promise And Over-Deliver Years ago, the airlines enacted creative measures to improve their on-time records and decrease the number of passenger complaints about latearriving flights. A June 2009 USA Today article quoted one airlines operations manager as saying, “The airlines are no more on-time than they used to be, but they’re better at covering it up.”
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November 2015
MODEL AIRPLANES?
Even though the time that flights spend in the air hasn’t changed, airlines have made “strategic adjustments” (as the CEO of American Airlines called it) in their scheduling – otherwise known as “padding” flight times. That’s why our pilot was able to gush upon arrival, “Welcome to Phoenix. We arrived 35 minutes ahead of schedule!”
The airlines created billions of dollars in additional profits for themselves when they started making services that used to be standard for all passengers into “optional upgrades.”
Managing customer expectations like this is one of the keys to customer satisfaction. I have counseled thousands of business owners and salespeople over the years to sacrifice the instant gratification that comes with overpromising something to a customer in exchange for the long-term gain to be had from under-promising so that one can over-deliver. For example, the poor salesperson will want to be liked and/or make the sale by over-promising things like “I’ll get that quote out to you right away” or “Yes, your widgets should be delivered to you by Friday” – but then when inevitable delays occur, the customer is left feeling angry and frustrated. Much smarter are the under-promisers, such as the cereal companies of my childhood, who instructed me to “Send in two boxtops and wait 4 to 6 weeks for delivery.” When my secret decoder ring then arrived in “only” two weeks, I was ecstatic at what fantastic service they had! Perhaps the worst violators of this rule are the professionals who squeeze in way too many appointments in any given day, so that their patients or clients are left frustrated and fuming as they sit dutifully in their Waiting Room while being ignored well past their set appointment time. Question: Do you make a habit of over-promising or over-delivering?
Create Upsells The airlines created billions of dollars in additional profits for themselves when they started making services that used to be standard for all passengers into “optional upgrades.” These include in-flight food and movies (and now on-board wi-fi), and the two biggies: fees for checked bags and flight changes. Those two fees alone were responsible for over $10 billion in additional revenue to the airlines in 2014 alone (and since they are “fees” as opposed to being included in the actual fares, the airlines pay zero taxes on that revenue!).
Question: What goods and/or services that are currently part of YOUR standard deliverable can you make into “optional upgrades” to bring you additional revenue while delivering the same thing as you already do?
Use Joint Ventures The airlines reward all kinds of referral partners to help them sell tickets, including travel websites, event coordinators and good old travel agents (yes, some of them still exist). Question: What strategic alliances can YOU make with other businesses to encourage and reward them for promoting yours? Oh, and here’s one practice of almost the entire airline industry NOT to model: It’s amazing and sad how they continue to treat their customers with tremendous condescension and disrespect – regardless of how many frequent flyer miles people continue to rack up with them. Question: Don’t do that.
To find out more about Steve Sipress and how he can help you have more fun and make more money with your business, see the Inside Cover Page.
*Bonus: By making checked bags an “optional upgrade,” that allows the airlines to use that as an incentive for passengers to purchase other services, such as “Get one free checked bag on every flight with membership in our High Flyers Club for only $300 a year.” This strategy works so well for the airlines that they now find all kinds of “optional upgrades” to charge for, such as extra legroom, priority boarding, airport lounges, and even extra frequent flyer miles – adding billions of dollars in additional revenue to their bottom lines.
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To get new money-making strategies and tips every weekday from Steve and other top business-building experts from around the world, go to:
www.RhinoDaily.com
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November 2015
EXPERT INTERVIEW
expert interview with
Austin Walsh The Boy Wonder
Nobody wants to buy a service or a product anymore – they want a result or an experience.
Steve Sipress: Austin Walsh, the Boy Wonder! Fantastic to have you here on the Rhino Daily Podcast! Austin Walsh: Hey man. First off, Steve, I’m excited to be here, and I’d like to thank you for having me on the call. I’m pumped. Steve: Obviously, I thank you profusely. Now, we go way back to a quarter of your life or something. Seriously now, I know your story, and maybe some of the listeners do, but I never get tired of hearing it again. Basically, you were like any other high school teenage kid – you just wanted to have a party and get a few people together, and then suddenly,
everything exploded. Tell us about that story. I love it! Austin: Well, long story short, I started off like any high school kid, throwing parties in my mom’s basement, until she wouldn’t let me throw a party that she knew about. After that, I just had to find a different place to throw a party. So, I moved into different venues. I had my Sweet 16 party, I had 400 kids show up for free, and super-long story short, a month and a half later, we… Steve: Wait a minute. You had 400 kids show up… Austin: Yeah, we had 400…
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Steve: on your 16th birthday party? Austin: It was all for free, and I decided that if you have 400 show up for free, if you charge $20 a head, you can probably make $8,000 a night. I liked those numbers. Steve: Wait a minute. If they’re free, that means that you or your parents were paying for a heck of a lot of food and drinks. Austin: You have to realize; no booze – they’re only 16 years old. Steve: No, I don’t mean booze, I mean cases and cases and cases of sodas, or whatever they’re drinking. 400 kids!
EXPERT INTERVIEW
What did your parents say, “What are you doing?” Austin: We had it at a public venue, the 400 people party, so they had to go buy their own water and pizza and stuff. We just supply, we just recommended. Steve: I got it. But you’re saying, you’re kicking yourself, going, “I could have at least charged a $5 cover charge, they all would have been happy to pay it.” Austin: Right, exactly. All day long. Steve: Or am I dating myself with the $5 cover charge? What’s the cover charge nowadays, for you young whippersnappers? Austin: About 20 bucks a head, so you figure that. Steve: Oh my God! 20 bucks a head times 400 people. So you missed out on eight grand! Austin: Yeah, in that one night. But I realized that I could do that. So about a month and a half later, we threw a New Year’s Eve party. We had 1,000 kids at $20 a head. That’s the short version of the story, but I became The Party Guy on the south side of Chicago, booking guys, like, have you heard of “Skateboard P,” who is now known as Pharrell? LMFAO, Fall Out Boy, All Time Low… Doing these big shows in the south suburbs, in Chicago here. It was awesome! Steve: Even I have heard of a couple of those names. Wait a minute. You’re saying you had those guys playing live at your events? Austin: Yeah. Before they were massive, they were, of course, just like everyone else – they were up and coming, and small artists. At one point in life, you could book Pharrell for $7,500 for the night. Not anymore, but… Steve: So, let me get this straight: This is the guy with the big hat who sings like, “You’re happy and you know it” or something.
November 2015
I think a lot of small businesses won’t survive the next three to five years, because they’re not evolving, and they’re not ready to change with the times. And that especially goes to your audience, the plumbers, and the doctors, and that type of thing, because those are the people that are the most old school out of the bunch. Austin: Yeah, that’s him. Steve: Well come on now, didn’t that guy, win like the Record Of The Year or something? You had him back when he was… Austin: Yeah, his name was “Skateboard P” back then. Different guy. Steve: And now, here’s the key of how this is... My listeners – business owners – are listening to this, going, “What the heck has this possibly got to do with me?” Because what you did is you didn’t just pass notes around in high school classes – you used what back then was just a brand new thing; you used social media. Austin: Yeah, we used Facebook. And then it grew like wildfire, and after the party business I realized that I was so good at running Facebook campaigns and running social media campaigns, that why not start doing my own online marketing? And then I started working with clients like Mark Victor Hansen, and Les Brown, and Peak Potentials, and then went on from there to start launching some of my own digital products, and then kind of “How-To’s” and coaching programs that have sold millions of dollars online. I’ve been blessed to speak all over the world, and travel the world, from all over Australia, to Europe, Canada, and speak on some of the biggest stages, the small stages, and have a lot of fun while doing it. I’m about to be 24 now… Steve: Well, now you’re getting the attention of my audience. I had you
speak in my events at least two or three times, and done webinars, and whatever, and every single time you’re a massive hit. And my introduction is usually the same. It’s like I would say… I’d just look to my audience, and I go, “Look, what’s your excuse?” My audience of business owners have been owning their – you know, a plumber, a lawyer, a doctor, whoever – they own their business for 20-something years, they’ll think about doing something for months, or for years, and I’m like, “This kid clearly can’t have been thinking about it too long, or studying too long, or planning too long.” I had you when you were still a high school kid. You were speaking in my event, and people were lining up to join your programs, and then they learned how to use social media for their business. But I know… Here’s the thing: Social media, I don’t have to tell you – or my audience – but this thing, you’re crazy! I mean, that changes… Every day there’s a new thing going on! Austin: Yeah. It’s evolving very fast. And I think, as you have more disruptive business models that keep coming out, that it’s going to keep evolving and keep changing how we buy, and how the psychology of a buyer changes in very short periods of time. So it’s exciting. It’s exciting to be at the forefront of it, it’s exciting to have seen it evolve over the last, let’s say, six or seven years now, and it’s exciting to see what’s going to come next, right? But the important part is that a lot of these business owners are completely
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November 2015
EXPERT INTERVIEW
take that as a compliment, that I’m old school. You young kids have a saying for that, like that I’m the “old school dog” or something... Austin: Hey man, not you. You’re not the old school dog. You’ve been on the forefront of this for a long time. Steve: Look, we’re jumping ahead, but my point is that social media is… For one thing, you picked a good industry, because you’re constantly needed. Social media… There’s a new site, and every time there’s a change, and there’s a change of that… So you’re constantly needed for a consultation, or for teaching, or for helping people out.
missing it. They’re totally behind the wave when it comes to… And you have to understand, and it’s very true… It might be hard to accept, but in five to ten years, most of these big corporate stores aren’t going to be here, and it’s going to be a completely online marketplace. If you think Best Buy will be here in ten years, let me tell you something: Whatever you’re smoking, I need some of it, because you’re the same person that said Circuit City and Blockbuster and all these companies would still be around. Steve: Now, retail… I think we pretty much know retail is going away. The only things that will be left are service. The restaurant, you can’t do that online. I mean you can – you can order food – but a restaurant, a hairdresser, these things will be around. Austin: Yeah, they’ll be around. Steve: The gym, martial arts instruction... But retail, for sure is going away.
Austin: Yeah, it’s going away, and I think people are living in fantasyland if they think it’s not. But what I understand is that small business really does kind of follow the corporate model. And what I mean by the corporate model, I mean large corporations, like your Apples, your Amazon. Small business models off of companies like them, and takes the things... Not to say that we don’t create some things, too, but we model off a lot of these things. So, as a small business, if you’re not evolving as the culture is evolving, my challenge is that, if these companies won’t be here in a few years, where are you going to be at? Right now, I think a lot of small businesses won’t survive the next three to five years, because they’re not evolving, and they’re not ready to change with the times. And that especially goes to your audience, the plumbers, and the doctors, and that type of thing, because those are the people that are the most old school out of the bunch. Steve: Okay, thank you. I’m going to
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But on the other hand, you have to stay glued to the cutting edge of everything going on in these things. You put a whole system in place, and Facebook suddenly says, “We’re not doing that anymore,” and everyone is back to square one, and you’d better quickly scramble and come up with a new thing for us. Austin: Well, I think it’s interesting. Because social media, what I look at is more… Social media is constantly going to change. But I really like to look at the psychology of the buyer, and I’ve gotten really into this the last few years. What I look at is how buyers buy things, from a psychology and emotional point of view haven’t changed. What I think a lot of business owners are doing is really simply that they’re trying to sell a service, or they’re trying to sell a product, or a seminar, or something. They’re trying to sell something. And I’ve just gotten away from selling stuff, and I’ve gotten to the point that I really want to offer either a result or an experience. And when you focus on the results and experiences on the online, and then get other customers and people talking about that, your sales go through the roof. Because nobody wants to buy a service or a product anymore – they want a result or an experience.
EXPERT INTERVIEW
November 2015
And I think about it like this, Steve: I think anything that you do all day long could come down to you do it for a result or an experience. For instance, why do you brush your teeth in the morning? Steve: Because my Mom told me to. Austin: Right. But it’s the result of having what? Clean teeth. Steve: All kinds of things, right? So, you have fresh breath, clean teeth, live longer, have a whiter smile, or whatever. Austin: So I get down to that… Every single thing that you do can be narrowed down to you doing it for a result or an experience, right? Now, sometimes those results and experiences aren’t always positive, but that’s okay. But it’s something that, when you get down to the root of it, it’s something that a buyer can understand. And it’s something that, when you start pushing out that on social media – something that a buyer can understand – instead of trying to shove something down their throat that a lot of times they just don’t want, you get a lot better result for yourself. Steve: All right, okay. So here’s the thing… Now I can see that we’ve hit the end of today’s segment, but I know you’re sticking around. And tomorrow, I would like to get into a little bit more about this: How a small business owner who is… My best clients, they’re owning businesses – they’re not sitting there Facebooking all day long. So how can they make money off social media, without it sucking all their time out of their life, and sit there watching videos of cats or something. Can we talk about that? Austin: Yeah, let’s discuss it. Steve: Sounds great.
In five to ten years, most of these big corporate stores aren’t going to be here, and it’s going to be a COMPLETELY ONLINE MARKETPLACE.
Austin Walsh is a successful young internet entrepreneur & marketer from Chicago, Illinois. He became an entrepreneur at the age of 15 when his started a DJ business with a loan from his father for $400.00. He turned that into a successful business and began hosting events at many night clubs around the Chicagoland area. After graduating high school, Austin went on to become a student of personal growth and success education. Since 2012, Austin has been traveling around the world teaching entrepreneurs and business owners how to create even more success marketing their products or services over the internet, including a keynote address on marketing funnels at Harvard University. Connect with Austin at: www.Facebook.com/uloveaustin
To listen to the complete interview, go to: www.RhinoDaily.com/podcast
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November 2015
THE GREATEST OBSTACLE TO SUCCESS IN ADULT LIFE
The Greatest OBSTACLE to SUCCESS in Adult Life
By Brian Tracy
THE FEAR OF FAILURE
THE FEAR OF REJECTION HOLDS YOU BACK
Did you know that the fear of failure is the single greatest obstacle to success in adult life? Taken to its extreme, we become totally pre-occupied with not making a mistake, with seeking approval for security above all other considerations. The experience of the fear of failure is in the words of “I can’t, I can’t.”
The second major fear that interferes with performance and inhibits expression is the fear of rejection. We learn this when our parents make their love conditional upon our behavior. If we do what pleases them, they give us love and approval. If we do something they don’t like, they withdraw their love and approval — which we interpret as rejection.
We feel it in the front of the body, starting at the solar plexus and moving up to the rapid beating of the heart, rapid breathing and a tight throat. We also experience this fear in the bladder and in the irresistible need to run to the bathroom.
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THE GREATEST OBSTACLE TO SUCCESS IN ADULT LIFE
THE ROOTS OF TYPE A BEHAVIOR As adults, people raised with conditional love become preoccupied with the opinions of others. Many men develop Type A behavior which is characterized by hostility, suspicion and an obsession with performance to some undetermined high standard. This is expressed in the attitude of “I have to, I have to,” and is associated with the feeling that “I have to work harder and accomplish more in order to please the boss” who has become a surrogate parent.
ACTION EXERCISES Here are two things you can do to increase your selfesteem and self-confidence and overcome your fears. First, realize and accept that you can do anything you put your mind to. Repeat the words, “I can do it! I can do it!” whenever you feel afraid for any reason. Second, continually think of yourself as a valuable and important person, and remember that temporary failure is the way that you learn how to succeed.
November 2015
THE MOST COMMON TRAP
More than 99 percent of adults experience both of these fears of failure and rejection. They are caught in the trap of feeling, “I can’t, but I have to” and “I have to, but I can’t.”
THE KEY TO PEAK PERFORMANCE The antidote to these fears is the development of courage, character and self-esteem. The opposite of fear is actually love, self-love and self-respect. Acting with courage in a fearful situation is simply a technique that boosts our regard for ourselves to such a degree that our fears subside and lose their ability to effect our behavior and our decisions.
Brian Tracy is a best-selling author and world-renowned speaker, trainer and expert on success, as well as the owner of a multi-million-dollar training company, Brian Tracy International. For the past four decades, Brian has dedicated his life to the study of success – and to sharing his findings with success-oriented individuals. Brian says that while many people look for others to grant them “freedom,” the truth is that you can create your own personal freedom – and your own success. Brian has consulted for more than 1,000 companies and addressed more than 5,000,000 people in 5,000 talks and seminars throughout the US, Canada and 55 other countries worldwide. As a Keynote speaker and seminar leader, he addresses more than 250,000 people each year. He has studied, researched, written and spoken for 30 years in the fields of economics, history, business, philosophy and psychology. He is the top selling author of over 45 books that have been translated into dozens of languages, and has written and produced more than 300 audio and video learning programs, including the worldwide best-selling Psychology of Achievement, which has been translated into more than 20 languages. Get your copy of Brian’s 12-Step Goal-Setting Guide at: www.BrianTracyFreeReport.com
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Where’s the Gold in your Data? By Dr. Peter H. Diamandis
I collect *a lot* of data. We all do. The fact is that data is worth a lot of money. Google and Facebook built hundred billion+ dollar companies based on mining data. Shouldn’t you?
In Abundance, I wrote about my friend Rob McEwen, Chairman of Goldcorp, who literally mined his data for gold bullion.
How would you use a similar competition in your business? (By the way, check out www.HeroX.com if you’re interested in this sort of thing...).
Rob offered a $500,000 prize to anyone who could analyze the geological data collected from his Goldmine to help him locate the next 6 million ounces of gold.
***Beginning of Abundance Excerpt: Gold in Dem Hills***
He turned a $500,000 prize into a $3 billion return... Here are the details of how he did it (and how you can too). Enjoy!
A dapper Canadian in his mid-fifties, Rob McEwen bought the disparate collection of gold mining companies known as Goldcorp in 1989. A decade later, he’d unified those companies and was ready for expansion – a process he wanted to start by building a new refinery. To determine exactly what size refinery to
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build, McEwen took the logical step of asking his geologists and engineers how much gold was hidden in his mine. No one knew. He was employing the very best people he could hire, yet none of them could answer his question. About the same time, while attending an executive program at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, McEwen heard about Linux. This open-source computer operating system got its start in 1991, when Linus Torvalds, then a twentyone-year-old student at the University of Helsinki, Finland, posted this short message on Usenet:
WHERE’S THE GOLD IN YOUR DATA?
“I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/ dislike in minix...” So many people responded to his post that the first version of that operating system was completed in just three years. Linux 1.0 was made publicly available in March 1994, but this wasn’t the end of the project. Afterward, support kept pouring in. And pouring in. In 2006 a study funded by the European Union put the redevelopment cost of Linux version 2.6.8 at $1.14 billion. By 2008, the revenue of all servers, desktops, and software packages running on Linux was $35.7 billion. McEwen was astounded by all this. Linux has over ten thousand lines of code. He couldn’t believe that hundreds of programmers could collaborate on a system so complex. He couldn’t believe that most would do it for free. He returned to Goldcorp’s offices with a wild idea: rather than ask his own engineers to estimate the amount of gold he had underground, he would take his company’s most prized asset -- the geological data normally locked in the safe -- and make it freely available to the public. He also decided to incentivize the effort, trying to see if he could get Torvald’s results in a compressed time period. In March 2000, McEwen announced the Goldcorp Challenge: “Show me where I can find the next six million ounces of gold, and I will pay you five hundred thousand dollars.” Over the next few months, Goldcorp received over 1,400 requests for its 400 megabytes of geological data. Ultimately, 125 teams entered the competition. A year later, it was over. Three teams were declared winners. Two were from New Zealand, one was from Russia. None had ever visited McEwen’s mine. Yet so good had the
tools of cooperation become and so ripe was our willingness to use them that by 2001, the gold pinpointed by these teams (at a cost of $500,000) was worth billions of dollars on the open market. When McEwen couldn’t determine the amount of ore he had underground, he was suffering from “knowledge scarcity.” This is not an uncommon problem in our modern world. Yet the tools of cooperation have become so powerful that once properly incentivized, it’s possible to bring the brightest minds to bear on the hardest problems. This is critical, as Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy famously pointed out: “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” Our new cooperative capabilities have given individuals the ability to understand and affect global issues as never before, changing both their sphere of caring and their sphere of influence by orders of magnitude. We can now work all day with our hands in California, yet spend our evenings lending our brains to Mongolia. NYU professor of communication Clay Shirky uses the term “cognitive surplus” to describe this process. He defines it as “the ability of the world’s population to volunteer and to contribute and collaborate on large, sometimes global, projects.” “Wikipedia took one hundred million hours of volunteer time to create,” says Shirky. “How do we measure this relative to other uses of time? Well, TV watching, which is the largest use of time, takes two hundred billion hours every year -- in the US alone. To put this in perspective, we spend a Wikipedia worth of time every weekend in the US watching advertisements alone. If we were to forgo our television addiction for just one year, the world would have over a trillion hours of cognitive surplus to commit to share projects.” Imagine what we could do for the world’s grand challenges with a trillion hours of focused attention.
November 2015
The tools of cooperation have become so powerful that once properly incentivized, it’s possible to bring the brightest minds to bear on the hardest problems.
Recently named one of the “Top 50 World Leaders” by Fortune Magazine, Dr. Peter H. Diamandis is an international pioneer in the fields of innovation, incentive competitions and commercial space. In the field of Innovation, Diamandis is Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private spaceflight. Today the X PRIZE leads the world in designing and operating largescale global competitions to solve market failures. Diamandis is the New York Times Bestselling author of Abundance – The Future Is Better Than You Think. Abundance was #1 on Amazon and #2 on New York Times. Sign up for Peter’s video and email blogs at:
www.Diamandis.com
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November 2015
MANNY’S BLOG
Why is a Raven Like a Blogging Desk? This holiday season I’m thankful for one thing in particular: that the classic book “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland” is still going strong as it approaches its 150th birthday on November 26th. Of course Lewis Carroll’s all-ages story begins when the heroine falls through a rabbit hole. Too bad Alice couldn’t use my Uncle Julius to file a big personal injury lawsuit. Julius is a real ambulance-chaser, although to be perfectly honest, he also chases fire engines, UPS trucks, motorcycles, and the occasional rickshaw. (The lengths he won’t go to for Chinese food!) Alice encountered a White Rabbit carrying a pocket watch. What is so complicated about a rabbit’s schedule that he needs a pocket watch? “Eat carrots, go to Lamaze class. Eat carrots, go to Lamaze class…” Alice finds the little bottle with DRINK ME written on it. That’s about as superfluous as writing DRINK ME on the toilet. Go figure. Remember the Duchess’s cook using too much pepper, and the baby turning into a pig? Ha! I’ve seen worse: a baby turning into a toddler! Fellas, get your tail-protection gear ready! I wish people didn’t try to treat the Cheshire Cat as a completely fictional character. It would help with all these open-and-shut “The dog did it!” accusations. (“No, no – it was a cat that conveniently disappeared! Look closely and you’ll see his grin. No, I did not spike the toilet bowl.”) Ah, the good old Mad Hatter. I’m a rabid fan of the Mad
Hatter. Oops. Sorry for the gallows humor. You’ll remember that the Hatter’s tea party kept going because Time stood eternally at 6 p.m. (tea time). For me, time seems eternally stuck at “Is he going to accidentally drop that table food? Yes… no…then again…maybe…” “Off with his head!” was, of course, the recurring cry of the Queen of Hearts. That’s also what my cousin Dingo used to holler about chocolate Easter bunnies. I know – dogs and chocolate. I think Dingo was standing behind the doggie door when they handed out brains. Remember the Gryphon and the Mach Turtle dancing the Lobster Quadrille? My cousin Clarence is a Mach-2 Dog. He can travel at twice the speed of sound when he hears a can opener. Wait. What’s that? “MOCK” Turtle? Oh. Never mind. Razzin’ frazzin’ audio books. I love the poems in the story, especially “You are old, Father William – and that doesn’t even count DOG YEARS. Yeesh!” The one thing I have against the book is the scant number of canine characters. There are hares and lizards and fish and frogs and flamingos and hedgehogs, but poor Rover is underrepresented. Oh well – I guess I can take pride in the fact that dogs are so rare in this whimsical, surrealistic nonsense novel because they’re obviously too busy keepin’ it real, and – cousin Spike! Will you please take off that turkey costume? *Sigh* Twinkle, twinkle, little cuz – sometimes your brain seems made of fuzz.
Manny (full name “Emanuel” or “Dog With Us”) is Steve and Michele Sipress’ crazy, rambunctious cocker spaniel. He has a weak leg (despite a mostly-successful back surgery), grey hair, is totally deaf and partially blind. But he still enjoys barking at the mailman and landscapers, pulling dead frogs out of nearby ponds and chasing after his beloved squeaker toy. He loves everyone (even the mailman and landscapers), and everyone loves him.
12 I RHINO MONTHLY I www.SteveSipress.com
PETER’S LAWS
July 2015
*FACT: 95% of Small Business Owners work WAY
too hard, have WAY too much stress and make WAY too little money – then go out of business in their first five years.
Steve Sipress The WOW Strategy™ Creator
I help Small Business Owners who want A LOT more out of life systematically attract their ideal customers, clients or patients using The WOW! Strategy™, so they totally transform their income and lifestyle.
To request your personal, 1-on-1 The WOW! Strategy™ Session, go to:
Jon Bockman Sycamore, IL
“Steve is all business. He is an unbelievably smart, brilliant, brilliant man. I can't say enough about him. Steve has put probably more, I would say, thousands, and thousands, and thousands of dollars... I mean, I probably can't even put a true figure on it, because it keeps coming back, and keeps coming back, just more and more money all the time.”
“One suggestion that Steve gave me, well, without question, put $300,000 more in my bank account. And we are going to be using it forever. This is not a one-time deal. We’re going to be using this idea that Steve helped us with... and we’ll be using it until it doesn't keep working like it is. And so, the value over time could literally be way over even the $300,000 number.”
Mary Forte Bensenville, IL
Keith Lee Seattle, WA
“He's helped me learn how to market my business, and today I can say that we're more successful than we've ever been… I needed to learn how to market the business better to create more revenue, and that's what Steve has helped me with. The financial difference is considerable. We've probably close to doubled our revenues. We're on track now to do another close to $500,000 more than we did last year. So that's awesome. I do owe all of that to Steve.”
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RHINO MONTHLY Volume III Number 11 | November 2015
CONTENTS:
1
8
Model Airplanes? By Steve Sipress
The Greatest Obstacle to Success in Adult Life By Brian Tracy
www.SteveSipress.com/magazine
10
Where’s the Gold in your Data? By Dr. Peter H. Diamandis
12
Why is a Raven Like a Blogging Desk? Manny’s Blog
4 Austin Walsh The Boy Wonder INTERVIEW WITH
Publisher Steve Sipress Successful Selling Systems, Inc. 869 E Schaumburg Rd #237 Schaumburg, IL 60194 (p) 773-236-8134 (f ) 847-232-1535 Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
w w w.AskSteveSipress.com
Layout & Design Bobbie Miltcheva www.33graffics.com
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