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Pitching An Experience: Your Intentions

I want to talk about something, something that Sue Bryce has taught me that changed my business and my life. Sue, when we talk about knowing your intentions, because when you're going in to sell, when you're going in to pitch your work and your intention is: I need to make money because I have to pay my bills and I have to feed my kids and blah blah blah, then those intentions are just flowing right out of you. If your intentions are that you want to make this a beautiful experience for this woman, and because you want to show that they're beautiful, that's a completely different intention. It's okay to have the intent of making money, provided you're okay with the intent of making money, but if you judge the intent of making money, then it's a bad intention. Is there a good and bad? Here's the thing about good and bad, good and bad only is subjective to who thinks it's good and who thinks it's bad. Right. So I've met people that their sole purpose was they loved the numbers game...

of getting numbers, meeting numbers in their business, getting the shoot and doing the shoot, not the experience or the beauty or, they just loved the numbers, and they're very successful people. His intention is very genuine. He loves to make money. He offers what he deems is a great service, he's sincere and genuine, so I would say his intention is in alignment with what is good. So funny that you just found my block. (laughing) Actually we did have that conversation before where you're like, "There's nothing wrong "with your intention making money," but I always go back to the, that's wrong. It's not wrong. See, everybody judges that as being wrong. Isn't that funny? Okay, there is nothing wrong with wanting to feed your children. There is nothing wrong with, um, buying a Ferrari. Yeah. If you want a Ferrari, and you can afford a Ferrari, you should buy a Ferrari. If we took all of the wealthy people in the world with their beautiful homes and gave them a whole lot of guilt and said that they could give their wealth to another country or to all the poor people in the world and we'd all be in balance, we would. However, Oprah Winfrey did a trial where she got 100 people and she paid their debt, and their debt ranged from $3,000 to $30,000 in debt. She paid their debt, she came back one year later, and guess what? They were all in the same amount of debt again. Why? Now there's, I believe my friend did a talk, she went to a happiness expert, not kidding, happiness expert, 'cause God knows in this day and age, we're all looking for the elusive happiness, and he said that there was a number to financial happiness, and it was $27,000. He said the average human being, and over half of America has less than $1,000 in their bank. Wow. Yeah, less than, and living week by week, well over half, he said most people believed with debt that $27,000 would pretty much solve their immediate happiness or their immediate debt and bring them relief and happiness. So, if somebody took the weight of your credit card off you, maybe that car loan, and then you had a little bit extra to go out and buy a fancy frock and that new camera, that you would feel happy. And people really believe this, they put a number on it. And so I do ask people, I say, "If I was to give you $27,000 right now, "would that be a good number?" And most people agree, "$27,000 is a pretty good number, "if you were gonna give me that, I would do it." Well Oprah tried it. $30,000 debt, and then she'd come back the next year and they were exactly in the same amount of debt that they were in the year before, 'cause they never changed anything. Never. So one of the slides on here says, in this last segment says this, I put this post on Facebook the other day and it got thousands of likes and cheers, and it says you will never change your life until you change something you do daily. All right, so, um, it's no different than dieting. You can go on a diet, and then you can binge eat again, and what happens? You put on the weight again. If you change something in your money, you have to change it daily. It has to be a daily practice. In order for it to be a daily practice or in order for your weight to stay off, you have to give up something or learn a new skill. And daily practice is probably the hardest thing that we do because it's so much easier to cry about what we're not getting than to face daily what we need to change. Now, I don't succeed daily at eating well, but I made a promise to not eat wheat again 'cause it makes me sick. It's significantly changed my body. It significantly changed how I eat and how I feel. Every now and then I make the decision to eat wheat. It hurts, I'm reminded not to eat it, but I don't eat wheat every day and complain about being fat, anymore. I used to do that. So, it's like, if somebody calls you out for your biggest hurdle, and it's something you complain about but you're not fixing, and so somebody turns the mirror on you and goes, "Really, 'cause you eat too much." And you go, "Oh, they're being mean to me!" It's kind of like, okay, so sometimes it is that school of hard knocks, but the truth is is daily practice. So, you look at the goal of where you want to be, and then you look at that daily thing that you would need to change, the daily thing you would need to change, that's what's gonna make the significant difference to your end result. And then you let go of the process, of the end result. Have you noticed, and I'm sorry to use weight as an example, but I kind of like the analogy because when I was overweight I would say, "I'm gonna lose 40 kilos, and run a marathon." And people would go, "Oh, good on you, yay!" And of course I would lose one kilo, give up, and then, and it occurred to me, why do overweight people always say "I'm gonna lose 40 kilos and run a marathon?" I mean, thin people don't run marathons, so, what is it about the whole change? You know, "I'm not just gonna change a little bit! "I'm gonna change everything!" And then we fail at it, and the truth is is you can only lose two pounds a week. Overweight people never say, "I'm gonna lose two pounds." They always want to go to the end result. Expectations are too high. Yeah! And then you set yourself up to fail. So now let's apply it to business. I just use weight as an analogy 'cause it seems to be a common one. I used to say it all the time, "I'm gonna lose 40 kilos." And then it would be like, "When are you gonna lose 40 kilos?" you know, just-- It's that black and white thinking. Lose one kilo. It's this or it's that. Yeah, it is. Instead of saying, "I'm gonna stop eating wheat." And then I realized that and so I said "I've got to stop eating wheat, it hurts me "and it's the reason I'm overweight." I found my reason, you have one too if that's what you're looking for, for your illness, for your weight, for your condition, for your money, there is a one reason, daily practice that you are not doing every day that you're avoiding and you're trying to get past the daily practice in order to get a result you're never gonna get 'cause you're simply on the wrong track. It's almost like if your, you don't like the way your external world is looking, if things aren't right, it's because there's something going on internally you're not fixing. Absolutely. That internal is completely reflective of what's happening outside. Absolutely, and yet we don't acknowledge that 'cause it's not our fault, it's everybody else's fault. So, I feel like the, and I love Oprah, I love watching Oprah, I love who Oprah brings to the table. I've started recording Soul Sunday, SuperSoul Sunday, and Master Class, and she said to a woman, she just interviewed a woman the other day that sold eight million books and she made eight million dollars, basically a dollar a book or something, and Oprah pretty much put her book on Oprah and that's why it sold millions all around the world and then she was look, "Whoop, whoop!" like won Lotto, and now she's poor again, and they were like, how did that happen? People win Lotto and lose all their money. They don't value themselves enough to keep it. There has to be a boundary. If you're losing money, there has to be a boundary that whoever's taking your money off you, you say no to them. And you value yourself enough to keep it. Do you understand that? If you're giving your money away to a sibling, to a child, and they're not learning to create, they're just siphoning you, you're not putting up the boundary. That would be your daily practice, to put up a boundary. A daily practice would be to practice your pitch every day with self value, every single day until you nail it down. What else would be another practice? Ask me what a daily practice would be because I want to break it down into a day so that you can simplify what it is that you're changing so that you can see it as not only achievable, but you need to let go of the final result, and just start your daily practice. I don't believe you start meditating to get to a Nirvana, I believe you start meditating because you know it's gonna be good for you. As you start to do it, you realize it works. You realize that you have quietness of your mind and you know, and then you start to miss it, and then you start to crave it, and then it becomes a habit, and before you know it, you meditate daily. Just like exercise, nobody wants to exercise, and then you start, it's a daily practice. But don't try and run a marathon, just walk around the block every day, every day for 30 days, and if you like it, you'll probably start running. If you don't, you'll keep walking around the block. Yeah, that's why they call meditation a practice. You're just practicing at it, you're not achieving it. So if your blocks become a daily practice, and you go, okay, I significantly have a receiving block. Every day I'm going to look at receiving, whether it's a compliment, whether it's, "I'm gonna buy your coffee." "Thank you." You know, I said to Nikki one day, Nikki said, "I feel like you're an over-giver." And I am an over-giver, but I've learned how to restrain that. And she said, "What happens when I don't feel "like I'm giving back to you the amount "that I feel like I get from you?" And I said, "There's always a way to give back." You can refer someone, like that costs nothing. I have to refer Nikki to you, then she'll get a job, and it will be because of me. I have to, I have to tell people about you, I'm gonna shout out that you're a good person on Facebook. I'm gonna make you feel good, I'm gonna send you a written card, handwritten card, or a handwritten, you know, a note, just to say loved spending time with you. You know, there's always a way to give back if you can't afford to buy something, or, there's always a way. As a daily practice, you said that you would walk in a beach, like the crazy lady, right, that everyone would hear you just talking to yourself. Do you find that, that absolutely worked for you, or did you want to have a real live interaction with someone who may throw you different angles all the time, or, I guess-- Part of my strength as a human being is I am, I feel like I'm the story of Narcissus. Narcissus looked in the lake, and saw himself, and then when Narcissus fell in and died, the wood nymph, we were just talking about this at lunch, the wood nymph said, "I cry for Narcissus." And the lake said, "Why? "When I looked at him I only saw myself." I'm a very self-reflective person, okay. I feel like the reason I am so self-reflective is 'cause I always wanted to be better. Like I wanted to learn how to make money. So I started to look at people that had money, and I saw a significant difference in what they were than what I wasn't, so I would study people and then I would talk to my friends and whatever conversations I was attracting at the time, I saw myself in those conversations. So I'd be like, "Oh, I keep seeing the same conversation "over and over again, there's a message in there for me." And then I think about 28 I started to read books, anything, Celestine Prophecy, Love Yourself, Heal Your Life, The E-Myth, Richest Man in Babylon, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You name it, there's a book for it, self-help book for it, and I became a self-help guru book reader, and every part of it was a reflection to a little bit of what I wanted to change. So for me, talking to other people instantly reflects back what I need to work through. And so if Nikki comes to me with a problem, I identify it immediately, I've either been through it, or I'm going through it right now, and I'll say back to her, "This is a good lesson for us, "'cause I am also in this situation." And here's the crazy thing, you attract conversation that you need to learn, it's so bizarre, but often Nikki will say something to me and I'll say, "Well this is, I'm in the same boat. "We need to put more boundaries up "and we need to be more assertive in our businesses, "so how about this, you go to this person and say "no, this is not what's gonna happen. "I'll go to this person and say this, "and then we're both standing up for ourself." 'Cause I will see a reflection of myself very easily in what other people are going through. So, yes, do I need real interaction with people? Yes, walking on the beach doesn't cut it, but it did help me practice. How do you do a daily practice for something tangible, like I want a new studio? How do you incorporate, that's a question from Wendy, how can I achieve to get an in-town studio? How do I turn that into a daily practice? Okay, so in order to have an in-town studio, she would need to make a certain amount of money. I knew what my comfort zone was. I realized I had to make an extra $4,000 a month to afford the studio that I wanted in Auckland. So my goal was to look at how many shoots I was gonna get a month, work out my average sale, book those shoots every day, raise my average sale, until I could afford to go and get that studio. The daily practice was to put my business out there to fill those bums on those seats, to reach that money target. Once I reached that money target, I could afford to go and get that studio. And what I learned in that daily practice was, I had a whole lot of blocks around receiving, I had a whole lot of blocks around selling, I had a whole lot of blocks around putting myself out there, around confidence, around pitching, and then I realized I was never going to reach this target without hitting these daily practices, so every day, do one thing that is gonna contribute to the future goal that you want to achieve. Whether it's finding more confidence to do it, whether it's practicing more confidence to do it, whether it's writing out the numbers. Also, if the goal is say a, something very tangible like a new camera or a new car, or a new, you know, husband, if it's something tangible, write the goal on a piece of paper and put it where you can see it every day. Write it as my goal is to achieve 10 portrait shoots with an average sale of $1800 this month. Then you're not chasing money, you're not chasing anything nebulous, you're simply chasing bums on seats, knowing what your average is and raising your average every day. This is another thing that changed the way I thought about business, this concept. So I work for the FiLMiC Pro app, the app she was talking about, and I was talking about how am I going to sell this many apps in order to make this much money? And then I thought, oh what would Sue, how would Sue put this? And then I thought, no, it's how am I going to like open up this opportunity to 300 people a day to be able to express themselves in the way that they want to? Like just shifting that concept, instead of like, how am I gonna make this much money a day? 'Cause that's what you're getting, not what are they getting. Yeah, and just what is the actual true meaning of the whole experience? You know, instead of just like it's about income, what is it that you're truly trying to do? You're trying to share this creative tool with someone. You know, and so what does that mean to you? That means that you're trying to help them express themselves. Exactly. And that's a really, that's a much more, your intentions are-- Are different. Are different. So what happens if, let's say somebody films, they get the app, and then they go and film their child, and then something happens to their child? And then next minute, your five dollar app simply changed somebody's life. Yeah. You've got to think past the you. You've got to think past the five dollars and the units. Yeah. But at the same time-- It's how we think though, it's just how we calculate it. I know it's how we think, but the problem is, the problem is not that you think about the units, because that's a viable business model, the problem is you think about what you're getting, how do I get this much money? That wasn't about how many units you were gonna sell, it was how you were gonna get paid. That's the problem, if you're thinking about how you're gonna get paid, you've missed the point. And yet, that is the point, but what I'm saying to you is the energy shift is definitely very different when you turn it into service, you turn your energy into service.