Planning is the sneakiest form of self sabotage. Entrepreneurs know they have to do it (it’s essential) yet it’s also a huge source of needless procrastination.

The fact that we need to plan cannot be denied. This post provides a practical guide for preventing your planning sessions from morphing into time-sucking, momentum killing monsters. 

Strategy #1 – Put a time limit on planning

When did the attitude that “planning takes as long as it takes” become a default?

Like any other business activity, your focus should be on the bottom line when you plan – which means paying attention to the indirect (but significant) cost that your three day planning retreat (metaphorical or otherwise) has on your business.

When you’re planning you’re not engaging in sales activity, hustling with your marketing or developing new product. That absence of action has an impact. It means that planning actually costs your business dollars per minute. By taking yourself out of “operations” to “plan”, you’re effectively hiring yourself as a consultant (but you don’t get paid) and sending your chief “doer” on vacation.

Because planning is business, treat it that way. Put a time limit on it.

You’d never hire a consultant and say “Figure this out… three hours or three days… either is fine”. Don’t treat yourself that way.

Before you kick off your planning session, make a contract with yourself to quit planning at a specific time and go back to “doing mode”. Even if you don’t finish planning in time, you can always circle back to it later… and you’ll be better off for it.

Always plan to end planning.

Strategy #2 – Build experimentation into your planning

Experimentation keeps your planning based firmly in the realm of action and reality. By building testing, measurement and trials into your plans you’ll naturally push yourself to “do” sooner rather than later.

The idea is to always design a plan that requires some form of real-world experimentation for the plan itself to be complete. Not only does doing this build better quality plans (based on facts), it creates a habit of smooth transitions between planning and doing.

Don’t fool yourself that experimentation is only available to those in the geeky, techie realms of the internet. Although Google Analytics lends itself way to such trials there is always an opportunity to experiment, no matter what business you’re in. I recently ran a one month trial of B2B direct sales interactions, totally offline and 100% old school. Nevertheless we measured and then planned accordingly.

The key is to use a short burst of measured action, measure the results and then bring your data back into your planning as quickly as possible. Rinse and repeat that formula and you’ll be well on your way to business success.

Strategy #3 – Find a “stop me planning” buddy 

This is the extreme solution. The Planners Anonymous tactic for entrepreneurs who just can’t stop planning and start moving. If you’re crippling yourself with procrastination through planning, you need an accountability buddy.

Grab a friend – someone with basic business chops or even just street-smarts. Have them read through your plan (yes, you should be writing it) when you think you’re almost finished. Have them poke holes in it and ask questions. Ask them to hold you accountable to getting started as soon as possible.

When a buddy is constantly bringing you back to the “When can you start?”, things get uncomfortable. The best kind of uncomfortable – the kind that precedes big action and big changes.

Combine the three strategies outlined here and you’ll become an unstoppable force for making big things happen. You’ll never again get caught up planning and re-planning in circles. You’ll never again be seduced by what feels like the most productive form of procrastination.

Planning, whether it’s writing a fully fledged business plan or simply figuring things out, is only useful to an extent. Don’t shun it completely. Do stay aware though – never forget that the vast majority of entrepreneurial planning is a waste of time.

Don’t psychologically side-step the important action your career and business needs. Stop planning and start doing.

“There’s no such thing as failure, there’s only learning experiences”

It’s the ultimate business owner’s reframe. The final word in any post-disaster discussion. “What did you learn?” is the default question for business coaches and consultants the world over.

Learning is always good, right?

Except when it isn’t. Expect when learning is killing your ability to succeed as an entrepreneur. 

A few weeks back, I published an article about a powerful cognitive phenomenon known as Sunk Cost Bias. It’s an ingrained mental habit we all have, that dramatically impacts our behavior as entrepreneurs.

Turns out it isn’t the only bias we have.

Information Bias is our tendency to seek information even when it cannot effect action.

This is going to be a short post, because that really says it all.

As entrepreneurs, we have information bias up to our eyeballs. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably one of the more seriously afflicted.

Why? Because we love learning. We’re enchanted by the idea of expanding our awareness. We hunt down magic bullets to business success in what ever format we can get our hands on.

We seek out info, analysis, expert opinion… all in an effort to slake our thirst for rich, useful information.

But does our cup runneth over?

There comes a time in every entrepreneurs career when action not information is needed. As a crisis unfolds, doing is more important than learning. 

When a customer is angry about something, your swift action will un-frazzle them and perhaps make them loyal for life.

When a supplier drops the ball, your swift action will ensure you (and your customers) are not left in the lurch.

When your marketing plan is planned and your sales pitch is practice-perfect, only action will create actual sales.

Only action puts dollars in the bank.

Be aware of your Information Bias. Keep a weather eye out for the tendency to look for nice, comfortable learning experiences when doing is what’s needed.

It’s far less scary to check your analytics again… or hunt for another how-to guide… than it is to do the thing you know you should do. If you give in to your information bias you’ll simply learn that you already know what do. Again.

Would you like to be a little less smart and a little more wealthy? There are no wrong answers to that question – so let’s hear your perspective on Information Bias! Leave a comment…

Time for a post that’s pure personal development. With a distinctly shrink-for-entrepreneurs “not what you were expecting” flavor, of course.

Stretching yourself with exercises that don’t revolve around business or traditional “personal growth” topics is critical to the success (and acceleration) of your entrepreneurial career.

In between all the workshops, non-fiction reading and mentoring we sometimes forget that the lives we lead are our primary medium for learning and growth. This post outlines seven real-world experiences that’ll permanently transform your thinking for the better – ensuring a revolution of business results. 

Your life and your career are one.

Trying to draw a line between your business career and your personal life doesn’t work. The way you do anything in life, from picking up groceries to raising your children, is the way you do everything in life – including running a company.

Simply put, every part of your life is an analogue of (and a metaphor for) the other parts of your life. The tiny (but crucial) lessons you learnt in grade school still influence your thinking as a “grown up” entrepreneur. Struggle with math? I did and that’s why I outsource all my accounting – no coincidence.

The overlap doesn’t stop there though. Fanatical sportspeople intuitively get competitive in business. Duh, right? What you do in your weekend is intimately connected to the way you conduct meetings on a Wednesday. The way you relate in your relationships at home determines the way you relate to your staff and customers. And vice versa.

Life is just one big ol’ mess of perception, projection and topsy-turvy unconscious mind metaphor. Your business is no exception.

This might be a scary thought for those of your pursuing some ideal of “work life balance” but fear not, your life and business being the same is good news.

When we view every part of our lives as a metaphorical analogue of our entrepreneurial career, we’re presented incredible opportunities for fun, fulfillment and growth. At every moment.

The list I’m about to present to you sums up the seven most game-changing exercises for entrepreneurs who *get* that the way they show up in life is the way they show up at work.

Follow every one of these suggestions over the next month and your life and business will rocket to levels of success higher than you can imagine. The best part? Every suggestion on this list is a heap of fun anyway and I guarantee you’ve already told yourself “I should do that one day” for about half of these.

Let’s get into it.

Exercise 1: Expand your intelligence laterally 

Become knowledgeable in a “wide and shallow” way, across a range of topics. Read, read and read some more. Get to know the basics of economics, anthropology, history, philosophy and… paleontology. Whatever. That’s only half the list.

Our past is particularly important to know about – getting a grasp of what it really means to be alive in this tiny technological blip (dwarfed by our massive history) will give you a unique perspective next time you try to sell a customer something.

Knowing stuff is important.

Exercise 2: Do something you fear at a visceral level (with a low probability of danger) 

Of all the metaphorical intersections between life and business, fear is the most powerful. Starting a business is a lot like leaping out of a plane – the anxiety is the same as if you were about to die, but the statistical chance of you ending up as a pink smear are very very low.

You’ll make it, love it and immediately say “can we do that again?!”

I’m sure I don’t need to explain the value of giving yourself experience overcoming irrational fears, transforming them into exciting fun experiences.

Exercise 3: Master a single deep and narrow skill 

Become an authority on a single field of knowledge that’s totally random… just because. Train your brain to go deep into a single discipline and you’ll really develop the mental muscle to do the same in your business.

You’ll also discover that as you explore the finer intricacies of pre-roman Gaelic dance rituals… that, like everything else in life, your new passion is dripping with business metaphors and subtle value.

Exercise 4: Read incredible, perspective-altering fiction 

Don’t get caught in the trap of exclusively reading non-fiction. Nourish your mind with some truly brain bending fiction that shakes up your view of the world, exposes you to new beliefs and generally asks more questions than it answers.

No entrepreneur should be content with a static mental map of the world, so let some literary visionaries wipe the cobwebs from your eyes.

Some devilishly dangerous suggestions are anything by: Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins or Orson Scott Card.

Exercise 5: Persuade someone else to make a life altering, positive decision 

Find that friend who’s contemplating throwing everything away to travel the world. Convince her to do it. Sit down and patiently rationalize the value and importance of “choosing life” and doing the scary, fun thing… instead of the safe boring option. Explain it all to her.

This one should be obvious: You’re not really talking to someone else – you’re talking to yourself. Sure, you’re persuading your friend (sales skills anyone?) and they’re benefiting from your persuasion… but you’re really seducing your own unconscious. Aha!

Exercise 6: Build something with your hands

These days, so many entrepreneurs are creators only in the realm of the mind – which is awesome and fantastic (therein lies “scale” – we can’t all be wood workers) but it’s sometimes problematic.

We lose touch with that very real “man-make-FIRE!” experience that our ancestors felt when they carved out the first spear and stabbed the first mammoth. Ditto first musical instrument (for those who find mammoth metaphors too grisly to contemplate).

Go get your hands dirty. Build something. Make your mind see how things connect, stick together and stay that way. Find out how to plane an edge perfectly, make things smooth and strong.

Imbue yourself with powers of creation that reside in both the mind and the muscle.

Exercise 7: Remind yourself to be grateful 

Most important of all, reconnect with gratitude.

Go find the place, or be with the people, or listen to that thing or do whatever you need to do… to remember just how fortunate and blessed you are.

Remember how lucky you are to be who you are, in this where and when. The fact that you even have a shot at being an entrepreneur makes you better off than about a billion people – the fact that you’re reading this on a screen makes you better off than about 5 billion of them.

I find gratitude in places with views – right now it’s the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Last year it was the Southern Alps of New Zealand or the Sydney harbor bridge. Something about high places and epic vistas reminds me of exactly where I am, how small I am and how fortunate I am.

Find your gratitude.

That’s it.

What other exercises do you think need to be on this list? What real life experiences contribute to your success as an entrepreneur?

With your help, I suspect the comments on this post could outpace the value of the post itself. There are no wrong answers, so let me know your thoughts…

“Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”  - Zig Ziglar

This post is expressly written for those entrepreneurs who close deals directly. Face to face, over the phone or even via email – direct selling is still the best way to convince prospects to part with large sums of money for high value product, service or experience.

If you’re an exclusively online entrepreneur or sell something so transactional (groceries) that no direct selling is needed, then this article is also for you. For you (and all of us), sales skill is what gets you your killer network (selling yourself), your affiliate deals and funding if necessary.

Every entrepreneur must master sales. Quickly. This post reveals the biggest shortcut of them all. 

The big mistake newbies make

I’ve met many skillful sales people and many terrible ones. The big difference boils down to a naive attitude that some call “the crocodile approach”. This is when a clueless sales person hangs onto a dead prospect, calling them, visiting, emailing and generally never letting go. The idea is, if you bite the ankle of an antelope and hold on like a vice grip… eventually you’ll get a meal.

The crocodile tactic actually works sometimes. Lots of sales training material will inform you that “staying in touch” and “several points of contact” is what’s required to close deals. From a certain perspective that is correct.

However, the crocodile gets exhausted. It doesn’t have energy for anything besides one massive tussle with a single antelope. It’s not efficient hunting.

Let’s be honest. Viewing sales interaction as a predator/prey thing feels… icky.

Adopt a crocodile mindset and you’ll condition yourself to believe that every sale has to be a massive, bloody struggle. You’ll miss out on the “antelope” that are queuing up to feed you voluntarily – they exist, but we’ll leave the metaphor there.

The lazy entrepreneurs sales tactic

“Obstacles” prevent sales happening. They’re objections and real situations in the prospect’s life that derail the sales process. The intention of the tactic described above (and hundreds of others) is to hold on long enough to disarm a prospect of these obstacles. It’s hard work.

The lazy entrepreneur simply seeks prospects who never had them in the first place.

Zig Ziglar said:

“Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”

The lazy (but smart) entrepreneur casts her prospecting net wide. She thinks carefully about the people who naturally lack these obstacles. She plots and schemes and figures out exactly where to go to find them.

When you discover a prospect who has both need, money, hurry and desire… your sales challenge is simply to create trust. In some cases, this is doable through a killer powerpoint presentation. Sometimes a solid testimonial is needed. Sometimes a firm handshake is all that is required.

Selling to people already have the need, money, hurry and desire is pleasurable – for both you and the prospect. They know they’re there to buy. They want to meet someone who can help them do that. They want what you’ve got and, this part is key – they want to be seduced into making a decision today.

The lazy entrepreneur doesn’t waste time working with prospects who need to be convinced that they can afford something. They don’t bother trying to explain why today is the day to buy – as opposed to “next month”.

The lazy entrepreneur learns to spot the signs of Ziglar’s five basic obstacle – from miles off. The lazy entrepreneur zeros in on only the prospects who don’t have them.

The smart dealer of luxury cars realizes his showroom is an art gallery – that it attracts people who just want to ogle nice cars. He focuses instead on those folks who’ve convinced themselves they need to act now, who turn up to the showroom in a Mercedes. The Mercedes is like a neon arrow above the prospect that reads: “Hi! I have the money AND the desire for this product. Come talk to me!”

The counter example is the newbie car salesman, who fails to notice his prospect arrive in a Honda. He then spends an hour describing the features of a two hundred thousand dollar Ferrari to an enthusiast who’s never spent more than $25k on a vehicle.

How does this apply to you?

No matter your industry, pitch or product… you can make double in half the time by making your sales strategy more efficient.

The first step is to get clear on what the defining, observable indicators of the five basic obstacles are. How do you know if your prospects are:

• Really needing what you’ve got?
• Able to afford it?
• In a rush to get things done now?
• Salivating in desire?
• Believing you’re gonna take care of them? (trust)

You need to be able to answer that question. If you haven’t yet figured out a way to spot these indicators in your industry/niche, then this is the ultimate low-hanging opportunity. Spotting these before you waste time with going-nowhere interactions will speed up your sales cycle (and thus overall success) enormously.

I use this tactic for selling my consulting services, which is direct sales via (mainly) email. Here’s how I pre-screen the five obstacles…

• I make it time consuming for people to get in touch (filling out my Become a Client form, for example).
• I pay very close attention to the spelling, grammar and email signatures of those who do get in touch. These are all huge indicators of education, experience and thus income level.
• I respond to people who say things like “Help!” very rapidly. In my game, when an entrepreneur needs urgent shrinking… they’ll tell me.
• I use the blog and my testimonials to create anticipation and desire for transformation of results.
• Ditto trust. This blog is a window into my world (hanging with me on twitter – dangerously more so). Like all bloggers, I let a bit of personality hang out to establish myself as a real person.

It may sound cynical to think of it like this, but it’s really a high-integrity, respect way to market.

I’ve carefully built my online presence so that I get very few inquiries from people who have more than one obstacle. Sure, I sometimes have to create a bit of extra desire. Sometimes I have to talk NDAs to create that extra level of trust.

The point is, I’m never pitching people who need to be convinced on each of the five points. I don’t have the time.

Neither do you.

Build a business and sales funnel that allows you to spot high-quality, fast moving prospects a mile off.

Commit to only investing your time and energy pitching prospects who need to overcome just one obstacle.

Be smart, be lazy. Your prospects will thank you for it, while you do twice as well in half the time.

Thoughts?

This post has been a long time coming. My experience on the Summit boat blew my mind to the extent that I needed a few weeks back in Sydney to fully comprehend this game changing event.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the Summit Series, allow me to bring you up to speed…

What started as a ski trip for nineteen silicon valley entrepreneurs has grown in the past four years to a white house recognized power-conference. Described by some as the Davos for gen Y, this year’s summit brought one thousand of the world’s best and brightest together for three days on a chartered cruise in the Caribbean.

The themes of the event include innovation and altruism – with a healthy dose of revelry for all involved. By day, entrepreneurs networked like crazy, pausing for talks from the likes of Richard Branson, Peter Thiel and Gary Vaynerchuk. By night, the dance floor came alive with the help of The Roots, world class DJs and unlimited booze.

I arrived at the boat with little idea of what to expect. My brain was first melted, in awe of entrepreneurial awesomeness, when I struck up conversation with the guy in front of me, Xavier Helgesen… just as we were lining up to get ON the boat.

Xavier Helgesen is a founder of Better World Books. He and two friends were inspired to do something with all the books left behind at college to collect dust or books tossed by libraries. In other words, books bound for landfills. Better World Books was founded in 2002 to address this problem by reselling these otherwise forgotten books online – an incredibly successful business was born.

If that wasn’t enough, Xavier then explained that a major portion of the companies revenue goes towards supporting their five major literacy partners: Books for Africa, Room to Read, Worldfund, the National Center for Family Literacy and Invisible Children.

Better World Books collects used books and textbooks through a network of over 1,800 college campuses and partnerships with over 2,000 libraries. The company has converted more than 53 million books into over $8.6 million in funding for literacy and education. In the process, they diverted more than 26,000 tons of books from landfills.

Meeting Xavier was just a taste of what was to come. Over the course of three days, I didn’t have a conversation with a single person who wasn’t rocking a remarkable business, making an extraordinary impact in the world… or both.

Individuals who had mastered both success, phenomenal lifestyle design AND social impact were left right and center. Blake Mycoskie, interviewed by summit founder Elliott Bisnow (this short video of Elliott’s is totally worth checking out) in the ship’s auditorium, was the quintessential example of this mega-trifecta of success.

Blake, a 33 year old who lives on a sailboat, is the founder and Chief Shoe Giver of TOMS Shoes. During a trip to Argentina, Blake witnessed extreme poverty and health conditions. Seeing children walk miles barefoot, often to receive essential education or healthcare services, was the inspiration that started TOMS and it’s remarkable one-for-one promise.

Blake launched a company selling a reinvented Argentine “alpargata” shoe, for the U.S. market. The pitch was simple: To match every pair of TOMS shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for One.

During his first year in business TOMS sold 10,000 pairs of shoes. As of April 2010 TOMS has given over 1,000,000 pairs of new shoes to children in need. One-for-one is making an impact in over 20 countries around the world. TOMS will be launching their second “one-for-one” product (a big mystery) on June 7th.

After spending three days in the company of people like Blake, if I had to distill my learning experience into one useful tip it would be this:

The movement of social entrepreneurialism, making an impact through business or just caring… is just getting started.

This is the big trend that today’s entrepreneurs are going to see grow. Spending time with a thousand people who totally *get* this made me realize that we’re not far from a future where corporate impact is mandatory. We’re not far from a future where people aren’t just buying shoes that make a difference – they’re horrified to hear of any company that DOESN’T.

In terms of your success, this is a win-win-win wave that you can choose to get on or not.

Like all trends, the early adopters win.

Wish you had started a blog in 2001? A search engine in the 90s?

In as little as ten years, people will feel the same way about “making a difference”. The corporate megalithic brands of today will be crumbling. The entrepreneurs who saw the “impact movement” coming will be laughing all the way to the bank. The best part? The world will be better off because of it.

As the boat docked in Miami, I departed immediately to a resort to recover. Even though I had been on a tropical island the day before, I needed a break. Laying out in the sun, I realized I’ve been ranting about the importance of social impact on this blog for a long time. However, my only rationale for doing so has been for “personal fulfillment” and “helping people”.

Personal fulfillment and helping people is good and all, but as I flew from Miami back to Sydney, the other shoe dropped.

Entrepreneurs are facing a future where if they don’t find a way to make an impact, their competitors will. Not making an impact may, one day soon, not be good enough.

The Summit at Sea exposed me to an abundance of entrepreneurs committed to solving global challenges. Doing so, it confirmed my faith in humanity. A future where entrepreneurs must make an impact, just to stay in business, is a bright future indeed.

I’m the last person who’ll argue with the notion that you’re a unique and beautiful snowflake. Just a few month’s as a therapist taught me that no two people (and their problems) are ever identical.

You may be the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, but your thinking makes you different. Except when it doesn’t. Sometimes, despite our differences, we all think the same.

Case in point: We humans have a psychological program running in our minds that destroys our ability to learn. We all have it – no one is immune. There is no cure.

Because of this mental program, we’re letting some of the best insights and realizations pass right over our head. Our development, as entrepreneurs and as people is retarded.

Learning about it and being more aware of it is our only hope. Today we’re going to dig deep into some juicy psychology to figure out what’s blocking our ability to learn.

The Law of Closure

This Gestalt Psychology principle holds that we have an innate tendency to perceive incomplete objects as complete. To close or fill gaps and to perceive asymmetric stimuli as symmetric.

That’s the stuffy, textbook definition of the phenomena that screws up our learning. What does it really mean?

As humans, we tend to work hard to “get” stuff. In fact, in modern english the phrase “I get it” has become an everyday occurrence.

“I get it”. Which is to say…. The learning is mine. I own this. I’ve grasped it.

I get it – I’ve got closure.

Whenever we’re exposed to a learning opportunity, we begin trying to furiously “get” everything in sight.

Think of the last time you asked someone for advice. Or read a book. Or a blog post.

In fact, think of any time you were exposed to new information!

When the human brain begins to absorb new information, it rushes to fill in the blanks. It “perceives incomplete objects as complete”. We have a deeply ingrained need for closure.

For some mysterious reason, we all like to digest new information in perfect bite sized chunks. Have you already spotted the danger of this tendency?

Hypothetical example:

You’re an entrepreneur. You meet a world famous business tycoon in the street, randomly. You ask her for advice. You’re smart enough to ask a clever question – not just some lame “how can I get rich?” cliche.

When the guru delivers their advice in a quick-fire soundbite, what’s your response going to be?

I get it.

But do you? You understood the words they said, for sure. You might have even understood the principle they were explaining… but do you really “get” it?

I’d define “totally getting it” as having a level of practical understanding that’d allow you to action your new learnings to create similarly amazing results. In other words, if you really GET the tycoon’s advice – you’re getting tycoon sized results.

But you’re not… at least, not yet. So you don’t really get it.

“Get it” shuts down learning

Even the words imply the end of a process. You get it – it’s been got. There is no more getting to do.

When you get it, the learning is finished. You’re basically telling us (and yourself) that you know everything there is to know about the topic and that you don’t need to hear anymore.

Getting it sends a clear signal to your unconscious mind. The message reads “learning time is over!”

Have you ever sat in a Q&A panel session, listened to another person ask a question and instantly thought “Oh, I already get this”? How carefully did you listen to the response provided?

How about while reading a business book. How many chapter-endings have you skimmed because you already “got it”?

Exactly.

“Getting it” is an absolute illusion. It’s a lie we tell ourselves to make it okay to terminate our curiosity.

The real masters of any discipline, be it business, martial arts or ice-sculpting all tend to agree on one thing: They never stop learning.

There is always more to know. New discoveries are around every corner. The moment you stop learning (and growing) you start dying.

In business, this is the harsh truth. The moment you get complacent some nimble young competitor sneaks up and blows you out of the market.

There is no “I get it”. You haven’t got it and you can’t even being to imagine how much more there is yet to get.

I might sound arrogant telling you this but don’t worry, I don’t get it either.

It’s fair to say that the moment an entrepreneur believes they “get it”, they’re at risk of some other (nimble and smart) whizkid making them eat dust.

“I know all about that”

“I know what kind of person he is”

“There’s only one way this works”

“I get it!”

Can we, as entrepreneurs, afford to keep up the habit of premature closure?

When we hunt to find the pattern, symmetry or closure in the limited information we have, we rob ourselves of the bigger pattern. We miss out on the sublime learning that can be discovered at even greater levels of closure.

The law of closure is something we never escape. However, the more aware of it we are the more we can try to escape it.

By striving to reject closure, we cultivate the curiosity and creativity that opens our mind to unlimited possibilities. Make a habit of doing this and you’ll quickly gain a reputation as one of those incredible people who simply sees things others don’t.

Think about the super-star entrepreneurs you know. Are they the people who spot the opportunities that everyone else misses? Do they create unconventional connections that change everything?

My favorite example? The law of closure prevented every shoe retailer on the planet from achieving mass online success. It wasn’t possible – everyone knew this. They got it. Except Tony Hsieh. He didn’t get it and stayed curious enough that he “got” something else entirely.

“Getting it” creates your own mini, psychological status-quo. When you get it, you’re subscribing to a delusion that you know it all. That belief, as my mum would say, is bound to end in tears.

And: It’s all fun and games until someone loses a business.

Seeking closure and completeness of understanding is part of what makes us human. It’s how we make sense of our crazy world.

We’ll never transcend it completely. Weirdly enough though, it’s trying to do exactly that (even though it’s impossible) that creates success and happiness in life. Guaranteed.

The act of striving makes the difference. It’s the most significant journey you can embark on as an entrepreneur. Best part? You’ll never arrive at the destination.

Do you get it? Let me know in the comments…

(This shot taken by me on a crappy Sony point-&-shoot at Cardrona, looking back over the McKenzie ranges. Total powder porn.)

The secret to success in corporate consulting is simple: Be everywhere, all the time. Have lunch with as many CEOs as possible and know about all the challenges they’re facing. Be aware of their problems before they are. Right when things are at their worst? Swoop in with a solution and make the sale.

It was that approach that earned me a, “Peter, we need you. Send us the bill,” status with hundred million dollar businesses.

In other words, it earned me a comfortable income.

But one night, I wasn’t comfortable. It was freezing outside, high in the southern alps of New Zealand. The snow was falling, and I had convinced James Chartrand to spend a few minutes talking business strategy with me on the phone.

You see, I had spontaneously decided to drop my corporate consulting business and ensconce myself in a mountain cabin. Date of return, unknown. Having spend the last few years hopping between antipodean cities consulting with investment banks, energy companies and mega-retailers…

I was burnt out.

I was sick of being everywhere at once. I had enough in the bank to disappear into the ski fields of the alps and absolutely zero plans for when I ran out of cash.

I left anyway.

And here was James on the phone, giving me a solution that had me uttering this immediate response, without a moment’s hesitation:

“It’ll never work. I have enormous respect for you, but you’re out of your ****ing mind.”

Little did I know that James’ suggestion was about to be the best business decision I ever made.

That fateful snowy night would be the turning point in having me completely replace my corporate consulting income within six months. James’ advice actually created a business model worth six figures a year in net profit…

And that’s even disregarding any future growth.

I didn’t know that at the time, though. I had to be convinced, reassured and persuaded. James’ suggestion of email consulting?

I swore it’d never work.

You see, I’m the Shrink for Entrepreneurs, working with very successful people and big enterprises. My whole business relies on psychological tricks, unconscious body language, and the inflection and analysis of spoken language. I help people make dramatic and rapid shifts in their mental programming by leading them through mind-blowing psychological exercises.

I firmly believed I couldn’t do that by email. And I was dead wrong.

I’m telling you this story for one important reason: Big innovations and revolutions aren’t some kind of mind-boggling, unsurpassable achievement. We don’t come up with brilliant new business ideas by climbing the Himalayas to ask a guru’s insight.

Often, the win-wealth-and-freedom ideas are right in front of us. We just need perspective from someone with street-smarts and real-world experience to point them out.

My guess is that you’d like to have a few more of those sorts of ideas. And that’s why I’m sharing this story with you. By showing you how my eyes were wrenched open to see the shining, highly-profitable truth…

You’ll open your own eyes.

Oh, I was dead right about the reasons why email consulting couldn’t work. However, in my righteousness, I didn’t stop to consider the other as-yet-unknown reasons why email consulting could be better than face-to-face work.

Thanks to James’ persistence (and her firm belief that anything can be done via the internet), I now know why email consulting with the Shrink for Entrepreneurs rocks, both for me and my clients.

Revolution 1: The language patterns are right in front of me!

As an enthusiastic (if somewhat closet) master practitioner and trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, my work is all about language patterns.

When people speak, every single word has meaning. There are no semantic mistakes, and there’s no such thing as idle chatter. Every word represents a deeper psychological structure.

The training to spot language patterns mid-conversation boggles the mind. It’s so difficult, in fact, that most NLP practitioners never master it. Instead, they choose (erroneously) to focus on convenient “step-by-step” techniques where they talk and the client simply listens.

I spent years mastering the necessary skills to spot linguistic patterns like Comparative Deletion (that’s when an entrepreneur says, “I’m just not good enough,” but forgets with whom they’re comparing themselves) and Nominalization (that’s when an entrepreneur says, “I think I have depression,” but simply failed to recognize that he’s depressing himself) and hundreds of patterns more.

I trained myself to focus every ounce of my concentration on spotting these psycho-linguistic patterns as they emerged from clients’ mouths. And even at the height of my game, I still needed a full tank of caffeine, eight hours of sleep and a clear head to note most of the destructive language patterns my clients used.

Until email came along.

When a client writes to me, no matter if they self-edit or simply rant and hit send, I can read the language patterns. And when I’m done, I can read the patterns again. I can RE-READ THEM! They don’t go away – they’re still on the screen!!!

The ability to “hear” a client’s thoughts, mull it over for a bit, then re-visit them changed everything. Re-reading client dialogue changed everything. In fact, just that shift in format made the most difficult part of my job the easiest.

Revolution 2: My office is now open 24/7

Imagine you’re an entrepreneur all alone in the world. Oh wait – maybe you don’t have to imagine!

Things are tough. You’re worried about sales and bills stacking up. You have big dreams but you’re not sure about how to make them happen. You definitely don’t know what to prioritize or where to begin. And maybe you have close friends to bounce your concerns off. But when you expose your darkest fears to them, you risk their judgment. You’re an entrepreneur – which means you’ve got an ego. Right? So you turn to your spouse, who looks at you with I’m-counting-on-you eyes. You smile and say:

“Everything is going great!”

Entrepreneurs struggle in an echo chamber. They need a wall for the bouncing of ideas, fears and all things in between. And a wall that can plot strategy and unpick your psychology helps too.

I used to be that wall for many people. I kept office hours and worked late to keep up with paperwork. I got tired. Fed up. Burnt out. I felt like I wasn’t there enough for people, but I couldn’t be there more than I already was.

Like I said, email changed everything.

Now my clients wake up in the middle of the night, their head filled with ideas (or fears!), and immediately fire off those thoughts to their highly skilled ideas-bouncing-wall. They can fire a brain-dump from halfway around the world and go back to sleep knowing that someone holding powerful expectations and intentions for their success will read it.

My clients sleep easy knowing the Shrink for Entrepreneurs will analyze furiously on their behalf, and they’ll wake up to fresh insight, reframes and suggestions in their inbox.

This simple format shift, from office to inbox, allowed me to transcend all the frustrations of a therapy business. Rescheduling, cancellations, running-out-of-time and being booked solid…. it’s all a thing of the past.

The best part? Clients confess they find enormous value in simply writing those late night messages, just because they know I’m reading. I always provide detailed, insightful replies, but often the effort of written communication (to someone who’ll kick ass if you have a bad attitude) changes everything.

Just like email changed everything for me.

It makes me smile, because email isn’t a revolutionary format. By internet standards, it’s old hat! But by mixing two unlikely partners – email and entrepreneurial shrinking – something quite spectacularly new and effective is born.

Now I’m dead curious to know what other killer combos are out there, just waiting to be discovered.

Revolution 3: My clients come to me perfectly pre-qualified.

If you want to find out more about what it’s like to work with me, you can try it right now. Many people don’t know this, but I offer a free service called the Next-Step Challenge right on my website homepage.

Fill out a short questionnaire and I provide you with a quick-fire, 100% custom analysis of your business, psychology and goals.

This is one more way that email helps me – because of the nature of the work I do with clients, it’s ultra important that I pre-qualify my target market and work with people motivated to grow, change and reach success faster and better than had they tried alone.

And email in the form of a Next-Step Challenge creates this pre-qualification easily. The pool of people who respond to my offer usually become my clients. Or they just email me outright. I don’t have to find these people or chase after them – they come to me, and once they see what I can do for them, they want more.

Never chasing for clients again and always landing the perfect type of client to work with? Now that’s revolutionary.

None of this would have happened, though, had I not opened my eyes to possibilities I didn’t believe existed. And that’s the cliche moral of the story:

No matter who you are, start looking for the game-changing opportunities that are lying right in front of you. They’re everywhere. Keep your eyes open.

And if you’re an entrepreneur who’s interested in transcending wealth and freedom to create impact in the world, I want you as a client. Get in touch.

Price point. What to charge. Every entrepreneur has experienced a moment of agonizing indecision as they hover over numbers with dollar signs attached.

All business owners think carefully about what they charge. Should you end your figure with a seven or a five? Go top shelf or bargain basement? Have half the customers at double the price or double the customers at half the price?

Pricing is crucial. In fact, what you charge will make or break your business. Higher prices simply work better. Here’s seven psychological reasons why…

1. Higher prices increase customer focus

When you charge more, your customers pay more attention. Trust me – I’m a therapist. I’ve often joked that a Quit Smoking therapist need only charge $7500 a session to guarantee success. When a customer is forking over serious cash for advice, they’re going to listen carefully and act on it. This is known as “Client Compliance” – their fear of wasting money becomes your greatest asset.

Focus isn’t only important for consultants. It matters for physical products too.

I never cleaned the toaster that I inherited from the eighties. Until it broke. Then I bought a space age toasting rocket (with glowing blue lights). It now gets cleaned out at least four times a year. Can you imagine the impact of this on the manufacturer’s guarantee policy?

My old toaster caught fire when the build up of years of crumb-strata finally reached critical mass and short circuited the elements.

Because I spent big money on the replacement, I care for it better.

The same is true for my old cellphones (which I broke every ski season, like clockwork) versus iPhones. My old iPhone 3G is still as good as new – without too many scratches. Why? Because it cost three times as much as any other phone I’ve owned. I once put it in a ziplock bag (snow proof) with a hand warmer (freeze proof) while skiing.

How do you want your customers to treat your product?

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling a service, product or information. Upping your rates creates instant customer-concentration.

2. Big transactions will ignite your motivation

When you’re selling a big ticket item, you’re going to get fired up. When the unconscious mind knows that a single sale could have you in caviar and cigars for months, it flips the motivation switch.

Want to see real world evidence of this? Go compare the attitudes of the sales people at the 2nd-hand Hyundai caryard to the guys selling custom Ferraris.

I deal with astronomically priced corporate contracts and nothing motivates me like the sensation of approaching the close. I might only get a few a year, but the motivation is still miles beyond what it would be if I was, hypothetically, selling $99 widgets door to door.

You know it’s all in your head when you figure out that selling $99 widgets, three a day consistently for a year, is actually a six figure revenue stream. Same end result, but it sounds like a nightmare – not motivating at all!

Pumping up your rates injects the razzle-dazzle back into your deals. Pursuit of a close is invigorating, because the stakes are high.

Increase your rates and give your unconscious mind something to salivate over.

3. Being expensive cultivates an aura of expert and elite status

Want to be known as the Walmart of your vertical? The bargain basement of your industry?

I didn’t think so.

When you have high prices, something magical happens. People assume you’re the bees-knees. You start to become known as the place to go for top-end, elite and awesome <insert product here>.

The thing is, if you’re offering top-end, elite awesomeness and doing so at insanely cheap prices… it won’t matter. You’ll never get the reputation you deserve.

Unless you’re a rev-head, you’ve probably never heard of the Nissan R34 Skyline GTR. It’s a mass produced, low cost rocket ship that can lick a Ferrari 360 Spider around any track. Guaranteed. However, the car retails for less than a quarter of the price of the Ferrari.

That’s why you’ve never heard of it.

When you gain the expert/elite aura, selling becomes infinitely easier. Doors will open, important people will shake your hand. Party invitations will appear. Media mentions will drop from the heavens.

Most importantly, people will start hiring you simply because they can tell you’re the best.

It’s your rates that tell us this.

4. You’ll make more money by doing less (aka “margin is everything”)

I’ll never forget my dad telling me the tale of his photo lab pal. Dad was an avid photographer, back when you had to shell out for development of every picture. I think it was called “Film” or something.

Anyway, he always chuckled about his buddy who owned a photo lab business. One day, his friend spontaneously doubled his rates. The customers were furious.

Fifty percent of them vowed to never return. The other fifty percent shrugged, realized they had been getting photos too cheap for a while… and swallowed the increase.

Overnight, he had cut his workload in half. His revenue was the same but he was making more money because he only required half the inventory. His overheads pretty much halved!

The fact that he then spent the extra profit (and time!) tarting up the shop to attract new, wealthier customers transitions nicely to my next point…

5. Big figures attract big spenders (your customer demographics will get exciting)

There are a certain group of people who will pay more for the little extras. These people will intuitively gravitate towards good customer service, style and speed. In other words, they want the best and they want it now.

This demographic will pay a premium for “top-shelf”, quite happily, knowing that they’re getting what they want. We all sometimes fit into this group. Sometimes we don’t.

I’ll spend double on lunch to make sure I avoid starchy carbohydrates. I’ll also pay more for a haircut where I’m less in danger of losing an ear. I’m a lousy sock customer though – I wear $1 socks inside $500 shoes. Sock merchants? Do not call here.

Why design a business that caters to bargain hunters? These people have no loyalty – they’ll ditch you for a cheaper competitor faster than you can say “Fire Sale”.

Increase your price and you’ll attract people with money to spare, who value what you do.

6. As prices go up, customer issues and complaints go down

I mentioned physical care of iphones and toasters, but that’s only half the story. Higher prices increase customer commitment.

When I started my therapy practice, I was charging $50 an hour. I had to deal with endless rescheduling of sessions (effectively wasting my time and increasing my overheads). When the clients did turn up, I struggled to get them to pay. I had to become a hardened debt collector, which made me miserable.

These days, my minimum per hour face-to-face rates are $450. My client’s never forget to turn up for sessions and I always get paid in advance. Almost all my email clients renew their per-month retainer fees without me even asking!

The more you charge, the less debt collecting, refunds and general hassles you’ll have to deal with. The customers who make the decision to shell out for your pricier product will take it upon themselves to be better educated about what you offer. They’ll be more decisive, more committed and offer fewer objections.

Would you pay to resolve complaints and hassles? Have you ever hired a debt collector?

If you simply charge more, you’ll get the same (or better!) outcome and you’ll make more money. This is a no-brainer.

7. Big rates motivate you to over-deliver (and customers will thank you for it)

This is really the psychological coup-de-grace. The final evidence that increasing your rates is a must.

When you start charging more, you’ll quickly figure out that you need to deliver more.

Just like the photo lab guy, you’ll start decorating better. You’ll add little extras. You’ll go the extra mile. Presentation will become important. So will speed.

Do you think your clients will notice? Hell yes! They’ll love it.

Increasing your rates overnight will make you sweat with the need to be more awesome. You’ll be petrified that you’re not “worth it” – that you’re somehow not awesome enough to have big prices. This fear is a good thing.

Being awesome is the only secret to business success.

Pumping up price is the psychological permission you need to innovate your product like crazy. Your fear of inadequacy is real. Innovation will allow you to transcend that fear. Innovation will revolutionize your business and dazzle your customers.

Then, they’ll talk about it. Word of mouth will take off and you’ll magically attract more customers than your old, piddly rates would ever have allowed.

Transform your business today. Double your rates and double your success.

Why haven’t you done anything else with the rates? What would you do with the extra profit? Let’s discuss…

Did you start reading this article by throwing up a little in the back of your throat? Perhaps you’re looking forward to an argument with the capitalist swine who would make such a statement.

Either way, you’re in the right place!

Since I’m both a capitalist (of sorts) and 100% convinced I’m right about the statement headlining this article, this should be interesting.

Here’s why making money is literally the only way to make art…

Last week I fired off a post about my plans to undertake a study of the seemingly magical abilities of ultra-successful entrepreneurs to transform the world for the better. Posting this candid outline of my mission got a lot of feedback.

The most unexpected (but common) question I was asked was “but what about the artists?”

How did creative folks fit into the social-change-through-entrepreneurialism model that I was devising? Is art important… and can in change the world for the better?

All fantastic questions, none of which I’m all that qualified to answer.

I’m an appreciator of art. A spectator. From a safe distance. You don’t want to see what happens when I get hold of crayons.

I do know one thing for sure though. Art, like social-entrepreneurialism, is something that only happens when the science of wealth is mastered first.

Yep, it’s actually impossible to make art if you’re not already wealthy. If you want to be an artist and make an impact through your work, your first goal should be money. Entrepreneurialism, it just so happens, is the best way to make that happen by the way.

Art needs wealth to be created. It’s a fact. The evidence has been around us for millennia, in both our psychology and our history as a species.

Take a journey back in time to the world’s first recorded artists – the Cro-Magnon stone age humans hanging out in what is now europe, some thirty five thousand years ago.

For a long time, scientists hypothesized that a sudden development in cave art was a result of profound evolutionary and cognitive development. In english, it was assumed that our brains got bigger and suddenly we started painting!

That theory feels right doesn’t it? It fuels our hopes that art is a form of higher consciousness realized.

However, in reality, there is another reason that a huge amount of cave art sprang into existence at a particular point in our pre-history.

Hunting. We got good at it.

The dating of prehistoric artifacts reveals two radical changes that occurred in our history, simultaneously. The first was an explosion in art – cave painting, beads etc. The second was a revolution in the tools of the hunt.

Prehistoric man figured out how to make lighter, faster and sharper spears. We sussed out arrows and all manner of pointy sticks for taking down woolly mammoths.

With the advent of this new weaponry, our ancestors got seriously good at hunting. Archeological digs reveal mass mammoth graves – these were slaughter houses. The remains of prehistoric man’s excess food.

For the first time in history, people were rich.

An excess of food was exactly what prehistoric folks needed to take a well deserved break. For the first time ever, cave people contemplated the blank canvas of their cave walls… probably while picking their teeth after a fine mammoth steak meal.

Art is a creative endeavor built on a solid foundation of excess, comfortable wealth.

Like our ancestors, we’re only capable of producing art when we are the beneficiaries of this same basic wealth. We’re not talking Porsches and first class flight lounges here – we’re talking about a transcendence of our basic needs.

Give a human the following:

1. Shelter
2. A full belly
3. Spare time
4. Confidence that the good times will keep on coming

… and chances are, art will happen!

Rob a human of any of those things and the art-making will cease as they spring into action to fulfill these basic needs.

These days artists find the wealth they need to produce their art through financial support from the government, family, friends, patrons, jobs and entrepreneurialism. Every art producer, by definition, has access to the wealth they need to produce their art.

Entrepreneurial represents the evolutionary peak of personal income generation. Creating a successful business is the fastest (perhaps only) road to personal wealth and freedom.

Logic (or perhaps just common sense) thus forces us to ask: What happens when an artist has more wealth?

Is the acceleration of an individual’s skill as an artist directly connected to their wealth?

Would we have more (and better) cave paintings if early man had figured out how to freeze dry mammoth steaks for later?

Would you be making more (or better) art if you had mastered the art of business?

(No seriously, I want answers to these questions. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.)

A few weeks ago, I spent some time at a networking event for entrepreneurs. First time I had formally “networked” in years – I normally detest networking events, since they’re usually 100% full of consultants looking for clients.

In other words, a networking event is the business equivalent of a nightclub filled with men.

On second thought, that might be awesome for some people. Especially in Sydney. Who am I to judge?

Point is, by the end of the evening I was ready to stab my eyeballs out with the nearest piece of cutlery. Here’s why…

I was attending this event spontaneously, invited by a friend – so I approached it with no agenda. I wasn’t looking for anything. Instead of pitching people myself, I spent the evening hearing the elevator speeches of dozens of achingly hot, web 2.0 startups.

About twenty minutes after arriving, a realization struck me. Like lightning. I was in a room filled with Ideas People.

I knew it when the third person I spoke to started telling me the same story. Something about their website that’d connect up amazing people with the stuff they need. All with extra awesomeness and synergy!

A few questions quickly revealed that the website hadn’t yet been built. They were looking for Angel Investors to get that “hard part” sorted out.

The website sounded like it’d theoretically be quite a smart idea. I asked the number one question all prospect investors ask: “What’s the go-to-market strategy?”

I received a blank stare. My heart sank.

Every time.

Why ideas really do suck

I’ve met a lot of wannabe entrepreneurs – amazingly talented people bursting with ambition, hope and motivational vigor. They’re awesome and I love them dearly.

But their ideas suck… even when they’re great ideas.

The thing about business is that no business is built on a great idea alone. Businesses are built on great ideas coupled with smart go-to-market strategy.

You’ll hear this same concept described as:

• The revenue strategy
• The profit model
• The sales funnel
• The “up-side”

Most of those terms are interchangeable pieces of business jargon, but they’re crucial to turning great ideas into fully fledged businesses.

The bubbles of silicon valley and the media hype that surround them are largely to blame. Revolutionary businesses that launched without a profit model to secure millions in funding have whet the appetites of this generation of eager entrepreneurs.

The story of Mark Zuckerberg, as told by Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network, has brought this hype to unprecedented levels. Mark is billed as the world’s youngest billionaire, based on the “market valuation” of his equity in Facebook … and despite the fact that the business only scraped it’s way to cash-flow positive status in September 2009.

The movie doesn’t tell us that Facebook announced only $550 million in revenue. Expenses (and therefor, margin) are kept on the down-low, since the company isn’t required to publicly disclose it’s financials.

This is what the wannabes don’t understand. Businesses like Facebook, for all their lofty market valuations and “billionaire” labels, may not ever actually translate all that potential money into real money. We’re still waiting to see what happens with Twitter – again, valued at billions, making nothing.

Compare these to the non-web businesses that had to do things the old fashioned way. Richard Branson sold Virgin Music to EMI for five hundred million british pounds. That’s not a valuation – they wrote him a cheque!

His business was a fully fledged, profitable empire. Not a costly website with millions of users paying nothing… and certainly not just an idea.

Most wannabe entrepreneurs don’t have a profit model. They believe that their “great idea” is enough to make them wealthy and famous like Zuckerberg.

That’s why Great Ideas really do suck – they’re dangerous! They ensnare the imagination of entrepreneurs and have them believe that they can bend (or break!) the rules of business, because of the specialness and cutting-edge’ness of their great idea.

A Great Idea is only great if it has a profit model to match

If not, your idea is worthless. Every single successful business, even the sexy web 2.0 ones, is built on a foundation of solid, profitable sales and marketing.

Plus incredibly hard work. Plus connections with the right people. Plus a healthy dose of good luck. But you can short cut all of those if you can just create profit.

Every successful business can demonstrate why investors can feed money in one end and pump more money out the other end.

The networking group I had stumbled upon was full of entrepreneurs chasing the Angel Investor dream – hoping that their idea would be recognized as “great” enough that someone would give them a handful of cash to get up and running.

Every person I spoke to had no clue how to demonstrate the Return on Investment an Angel might receive. They couldn’t describe a sales funnel that’d create a profit margin.

All they could think about was their idea. Their eyes were bright – their faces quivering with excitement.

7 factors that investors look for (and why you should care)

Entrepreneurs are people who make ideas real. They take dreams and turn them into empires. Or, they try to. Many entrepreneurs don’t make it.

Very often, an entrepreneur requires an injection of cash to get their idea off the ground. There’s nothing wrong with this – there is a lot to be said for bootstrapping your way to the top, but sometimes you need big resources to achieve big things.

If you need big cash you need big investors. These are people, typically experienced entrepreneurs or business people themselves, who specialize in providing seed funding to entrepreneurs with “great ideas”.

Most of these “Angel Investors” offer more than just cash – they can (and typically will) offer huge value by mentoring and guiding the businesses they invest in. Often it is this input that is more valuable than the investment capital itself.

Angel investors don’t just throw down investment dollars on every idea they hear, they have a specific set of criteria they look for. Each investor has a different style, but some basics are always mandatory. This list is compiled from my experience working with investor clients and as a start-up investor myself:

1. An action-taking track record - Evidence that you’re a “do-er” not just a dreamer.
2. Some financial security – Starting out with the basics (shelter, food, etc) sorted is a good sign you’ve got it together and could be going somewhere. Who invests in a bum?
3. Work experience in relevant industries - Want to start a restaurant? Working in hospitality first is a good move.
4. Leadership skills - If your business is one that needs funding, it’s probably going to require staff. Investors know that leadership makes (or breaks) the biz.
5. Sales skills - Because every business requires the owner/operator to pitch, at some point. The people who are ace at this tend to do the best.
6. Ruthless do-whatever-it-takes passion – An investor can’t afford for you to be indifferent when it comes to the crunch. Do you have the passion that’ll fuel your business’s growth?
7. Profit forecasts – Realistic, conservative and with as few assumptions as possible.

Even if you’re not looking for investors, checking off every item on this list will make your business investor-worthy. It’s the short-cut to success, minus the short cut. The pay off? As always, you win more freedom, wealth and impact.

What do you think? Is your business in the position where an Angel investor would/could throw some cash your way to help it grow? Why/Why not?