Outline

1. The Ideal You – A Visualization and Journaling Exercise
   
2. Ingredients (tools needed to implement the habits and techniques)
   
3. The 21 Habits of Energy & Productivity
   
4. The 10 Beliefs of Empowerment
   
5. FEAR Itself – The Top 5 Fears that Inhibit Success and How to Conquer Them (from my 20-page ebook, FEAR Itself)
   
6. 8 Steps to the Phoning Process w/ Sample Scripting
   
7. 8 Steps to the Meeting
   
8. How to Persuade
   

Self-Evaluation – I was a Time Hog, Sorry

First of all, I regret talking so much, or at least not asking for more feedback and letting us discuss things after certain topics. I felt a bit guilty for dominating the time and using it all to do all the talking. I think since it was my first talk in a while and I didn’t know how long it would take, I was worried I wouldn’t finish or that I’d forget things and would kick myself later for not mentioning. So, if you were at the talk, I am sorry for not making it more of a roundtable and planning out action questions for us to discuss as we went through. I’ll make a point to do that from now on.

Some things I Forgot – “Example Weight”

In general, I was happy with the way the talk came out. I felt I did a good job remembering almost all of the important info although I regretted getting off track at one point and not telling the story of how I got 40 referrals from one client. Also, there were a few other stories I could have told that would have probably added valuable “example weight” and by that I mean it is usually the examples we remember which help us to in turn remember the principles behind them. If a speaker or author doesn’t share examples, they are just sharing beliefs not facts, and that opens the window for readers to doubt.

On Omitting Explanations of the Habits

I regretted not going through and explaining WHY I use each habit, because I definitely expect those that were there to scan them and rule out many of them as unnecessary in their particular case (even though they aren’t) simply because I didn’t explain the WHY or the mechanics of the result of the habit. I’ve outlined them below.

21. Stacking Habits

Possibly the most important habit and I put it last on my list?? A mistake I am correcting now. Stacking Habits means deciding to let one habit be a reminder or a signal that it’s time to do another habit too. For example, in order to remember to wash your face or improve the health of your skin, stack the habits of rinsing your face when you wash your hands. You’ve already established the habit of washing your hands after you go to the bathroom (an action that occurs without a reminder) now stack on another action that should occur at the same frequency. Another example that has worked well for me is to stack the habit of making a bowl of vegetables for grazing during the workday on top of my habit of booting my computer. As soon as I log in and am waiting for my computer to boot up, I decided instead of being idle and staring off into space thinking about random things to go get my energy needs ready so it’s easier to make a good decision on what I eat later.

I have stacked my habit of turning off my alarm clock that is buzzing really loud with chugging water. Each time I do one I do the other, so the self-regulate. Try to think of habits you can stack this is absolutely KEY!

1. 6:00 Club – Get up at 6AM

I would have said that one of the books I read, perhaps it was GTD (Getting Things Done by David Allen) said to always trade 2 hours of evening time for an hour of morning time. Frank Bettger, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, was the one who originally suggested the habit and said it was absolutely key for his productivity. It is true, the norm is to look at the clock to determine what we should do, this makes hardly any sense however, because the priority of our projects and tasks don’t change based on the clock. There are deadlines such as having dinner ready on time or running an errand or something that we have to do, but putting watching TV in as the action item simply because it is after 5pm and “work” is done is nonsensical. You might think TV helps you “wind down” but it doesn’t it is just an escape and excuse. If you are tired from work you don’t need to wind down, you need to sleep. If you aren’t tired then you ought to work or exercise to get tired so you can sleep. Winding down would mean you are energized and need to calm down. Really what people should say is that they want to escape from the stress of their day and not think. TV makes you think though. You think about what is going on and your mind wanders to thoughts about how you might apply what you are watching to your own life, etc. If you want to “not think” you ought to just meditate because that is what meditation is – it’s letting your mind be empty for once. This can be achieved a number of ways, but for instance picturing one thing in your mind and focusing on having deep consistent breaths.

Philosophy of Aging & How These Habits Maximize Energy (Applies to Habits 4,5,6, and 13)

I would have liked to mention the basic Philosophy of Aging – that we age due to the toxins we carry around in our body. As such, a cornerstone of good health is eating antioxidants and going to the bathroom often as well as getting more than 8 hours of sleep to repair and restore. It is the repairing and restoring that actually makes us stronger, the workout is destroying the muscles so that our body will repair. Since this could have turned into an entire other talk very easily…

My Eating Habits eBook – The 24 hour Body?

I haven’t decided for sure this will be the title, but readers should download my book on diet. It is a chronological log of everything I eat throughout the day.  It’s an exact recipe for what to eat and when.  It’s a complete system for how I operate: a daily system you can copy exactly to achieve peak health, fitness, and productivity. It lacks the philosophy of achievement or wisdom on sales or entrepreneurship however, which is what How to Raise a Million Dollars in the Small Shop required as well.

5. Food Log: Using LoseIt and NutritionData sites as well as Taking a Picture of Each Meal Before You Eat

I would have liked to show a screen shot of nutritiondata.com diet analysis tool as well as how LoseIt allows single click meal loading. I think by highlighting those in say 30 seconds or so, my success rate for getting the audience to utilize them would have gone up over 500%.

6. Warm up / Stretching in the Morning

I would like to have shared some study data and support for why it’s important to get the blood flowing in the morning and talked about the anti-aging effects of stretching. This is one of the most important morning activities.

7. Time Log: Toggl and RescueTime

I would have liked to have screen shots and explained these apps so the audience could have seen why they are awesome. This is also true for all of the apps: Goal Reminder, Alarm Clock Plus, Mint.com, Evernote. Again this probably would have been 50% of the value of my talk.

Keeping track by logging your activities not only gives you a useful record to show others (especially good for job interviews) it also holds you accountable and rewards you for using your time well. Just being able to look at your pie chart and see your stats is enough incentive to keep doing well with your time. Mint.com provides this same incentive for money.

18. Empathize with the Future You: Prep your future Arrivals

This went totally unexplained. On the surface, the concept is pretty basic: prepare for tomorrow ahead of time, but to really understand why a deeper look is required.

Years ago, I would have said I didn’t need to prep everything ahead of time, there is no difference between cleaning something up at night or in the morning or filing something away is pointless if I’m just going to take it back out tomorrow, or laying out my clothes for tomorrow is pointless because I can just get them out when I’m putting them on. This seems true on first glance, but WRONG, it isn’t. The biggest difference is that by laying out your clothes you are visualizing your morning going smoothly and seeing your intentions. You naturally catch snags you would have run into in the morning as well, i.e. crap I don’t have clean black socks, or crap where are my keys, wallet, phone, oh yeah I have to drop off the dry cleaning tomorrow – is that all together? You set out all the things you need so you don’t fall behind and arrive late.

Philosophy of Being ON TIME

Being LATE is a concept I’ve totally changed my philosophy on. That’s another paragraph or chapter for another book, but for now suffice it to say that in a way, THE GAME OF LIFE all boils down to being ON TIME. Everything in a sense is on a clock: not just important meetings and conversations, grocery shopping (food is consumed as a function of time, so you should never run out of anything; buy it BEFORE you need it, but also and most importantly bills and retirement. Getting ahead is really apt phrase. One of the worst epidemics of our culture is letting LIFE push us through life. We procrastinate and avoid work until we are forced to deal with it. Why not get it done ahead of time because no matter when you do your work you are only going to do so much in order to retire. Take mini retirements as Tim Ferriss recommends if you don’t like the idea of putting “too much time” into work. Being LATE is a sign you are disorganized and THE GAME OF LIFE is beating you. By getting ahead in TIME, you will be ON TIME, and be getting ahead in MONEY too.

One of the best things he says is that one needs to prepare.  Don’t just do what gets you by for today but get ahead by doing more and more of what tomorrow demands today.

It would take me less than 7 weeks to run from Kalamazoo to New York City - 47 days of straight 15 mile runs.  That is totally doable.  If I had all day to go 15 miles, I could do that.  A lot of people could. That would be 15 x 7 = 105 miles per week.

No turns

No turns, this run is a dart, I climb over all obstacles.  This is not a road run, it’s an obstacle run.  I’ll have to curve around lake though, not gonna swim lake Erie…

Why do this?  Besides that it would make me stronger, be a story to tell for the rest of my life, and fun?

If I run from Kalamazoo to NYC, I’ll get some good press about it.  I can call every mayor and newspaper from here to New York telling them my story about Obstacle Running and the Young Minds Foundation and why I’m running, that I’ll be running through their town on x day and would like to do some service and give a talk to inspire the youth of their community as well as raise money for my dream of founding this school.  I need the best most powerful people to know me and my goals.  Once I’ve built these bridges, couldn’t only the sky be the limit??

Sponsorship

I can alert various sports clothing and shoe companies (Gazelle Sports, Jalas, Nike etc.) of my goal and ask for samples of their products in order to blog about them on my journey.  At the end, I’ll designate the best of class in each category of my equipment which the sponsors can brag about.  Foods, vitamins, sleeping bag, cell phone, backpack, ipod, headlight – anything that’s essential!!  Check out my heavy terrain obstacle running shoes!

I only need 2 legs and 2 lists:

1. Mayors

2. Companies

Check!

Founding Principles

We turn the most disadvantaged into scholar-athlete job-creators by pairing each youth with a gifted student athlete to build camaraderie and sustain a rhythm of life through mutual training and goal setting.

Email Pen Pal Mentorship Initiative

Connect local youths to top-tier mentors within my personal network. Since email is fast, unlimited in scope, and completely free, it is the most efficient way to influence the lives of others.

Self-sustaining Business Plan

Ideabuds will seek to contract the manufacturing of 3 simple product prototypes and license to distributors such as Nike, Addidas, Everlast, etc. as well as teach our students to develop successful internet businesses of their own.

1. Basic ball skills: dribbling, receiving passes, striking, etc.

2. Coordination off the ball: positioning, making timed runs, knowing where to go with the ball

3. Hustle: winning the ball means working when you don’t have it

To do this, we’ll be incorporating individual ball drills, piece-wise passing drills, and a continuous focus on positioning and physical fitness. I’ll be commenting on our team’s progress and depicting my coaching and strategy ideas weekly, so check back for more updates!

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I hate the name. Scratch it up burn it and never mention it again.

Just kiddin. I don’t like it though. I just don’t. I don’t like psycho or beast and we’d have to be constantly explaining why that is our name. Maybe that is the point, but I imagine calling people up and saying hi this is RJ DeLong, PsychoBeast Marketing, and on the one hand it kind of gets me laughing, but on the other it just doesn’t sound… for real. I do like the idea it gives though. Some kind of animal charging around knocking things over and causing a ruckus.

I picture a warthog running through a house and smashing stuff up with his tusks. Bull in a china shop. Negative connotation although I guess they would think we are going to be out making a scene and working at a really frantic pace to get the word out, which is good I like that.

On the other hand “Proliferate” doesn’t do that at all. It is just some lame word with no real image. It’s only good because of the definition I found involves multiplying. If I were to call up a secretary with PsychoBeast Marketing I imagine that would pique her interest and make us seem like a couple of fun guys, as opposed to Proliferate which would just seem like any other business name. The more I talk about it and think about it, the more I really like it.

Could we really name our company that though?  Don’t you think people wouldn’t take us seriously?

What would the beast be like?

Ok I’m kind of liking this now. Seriously.

I imagine a TV commercial with our psychobeast, AFLAC has a duck, we have a warthog. He’s kind of like our mascot.  And he has a little sort of blanketish thing that covers him as clothing like they put over a horse you know when they get it all dressed up and ready for the knight to parade around so his legs are open but it ties around his neck and drapes over him and on it, it says PsychoBeast and he’s all superheroish with his cape. And its some dinner party at like a ritzy place with guys who look like the guys from Mad Men (which are old school marketers / advertisers by the way) and they are all around dressed in suits and ties sipping whiskey out of fancy glasses and their women are all dolled up in evening gowns and one guy is talking to a bunch of other old guys talking about his recent client acquisition from the country club – yes Jim and I have played golf together for years… blah blah blah and in charges PsychoBeast busting through the door with his cape and tears around the room and jumps up on the couch and everyone stops and looks at him. It’s all silent people are frozen holding their glasses suspended in mid motion. They don’t know what to do, and Psychobeast stands there and squares off to the old guy and stares at him. He just stands there and stares him down for a second, and then you see a close up of one of the women who from the viewers perspective is in between but in the background ever so slowly so as not to set off the beast again turn her head from the warthog to the old man looking at him in disbelief with her mouth open to check his reaction.

Cut to black.

Display Text: Is your old-school advertiser giving you new ideas?

End of commercial one.

I spent some time writing up a brief intro to my past projects and experience. Take a look at my updated about page.