While there is certainly a time and place to step outside your comfort zone, it’s often more effective to continually stretch your existing comfort zone by building on your small successes.

This way, your comfort zone gets bigger and bigger and, being inside your comfort zone makes it easier to take the necessary action, gain confidence and improve your abilities.  This philosophy was taught by perhaps one of the greatest “coaches” that ever lived; the great fight trainer, Angelo Dundee.

Have you thought yet what you’ll take on as the action idea for this week? It really doesn’t matter what it is, so long as it contains some small successes upon which you’d like to build.

Make it a GREAT Endless Referrals Week!

During the recently held Extreme Business Makeovers event, I had the honor of being onstage with the great, Zig Ziglar himself, along with Mrs. Jean “The Redhead” Ziglar, proud son, Tom Ziglar, mega-successful entrepreneur, Howard Partridge, and my great friend, XBM Creator, Thom Scott as Zig delighted the crowd with his wisdom.

At one point, Howard Partridge asked me to recount the time more than 25 years ago when, as a struggling beginning salesperson I invested in a set of Zig’s tapes (yes, children, back then audio programs actually came on cassette tapes) that I could not afford, and which totally turned around my sales career.

A touch of laryngitis aside, I was honored to repeat a small part of this great man’s teachings right in front of the man himself.  I hope you enjoy it.

And, remember, Zig will see you; and yes…he does mean you!…At The Top!

Last week’s “Endless Referrals Video Brief” took us to the point where Referrals are now coming your way with your current referral source. In this week’s video, we’ll look at one more key tip. This will allow the process; the flow to continue uninterrupted until you have as many referrals as you can handle.

Now, put it all into practice. You ARE a referral-generating machine!

As I’m writing this^*, I’m looking at Maddy the dog, the Labrador retriever of Michele, one of my part-time team members. Maddy is sitting just to the left of me, giving me “that look” (i.e., “feed me, Uncle Bob”).

Interesting thing about Maddy; she looks at everyone as though they are the most important person in her world, and it’s easy to fall in love with her. And, pretty much everyone does.

The office complex management sort of frowns upon pets but everyone in our vicinity adores her. I think the paragraph above explains why. When she’s with you, she gives you her full and loving attention. She is totally in the moment, focusing on every word you say, as well as the way you say it. She even gives feedback (via the speed of her wagging tail) according to your intonation and pitch level.

Of course, her ultimate goal is food (trust me, that *is* Maddy’s ultimate goal). And she seems to see me as an easy “mark”; figuring – and, I suspect, mentally imaging – that, if she keeps looking at me like she is right now, I’ll give her a goody, which, I eventually do every time (even though I keep telling her this is the very last one and absolutely no more . . . and I really do mean it!)

Apparently, she also seems to think I’m a great guy, licking and cuddling up to me after each time I feed her something. (Hmmm. There’s an old saying that “behavior that gets rewarded, gets repeated.” But, as I think that about her, I suspect she’s thinking the same thing about me.)

So, let’s see; she is goal oriented. She treats people kindly. She focuses on the person lovingly and intently. She is graciously persistent. She understands the power of rewarding positive behavior. And, she lives totally  “in the moment.”

These are some great “winning” lessons we can learn from Maddy. “Thank you, good girl, for writing this blog post for me. Here’s a treat . . . but it’s the last one . . . and I really do mean it this time.

*This post is from several years ago, hence the reference to an office complex. Today, “International HQ” is otherwise known as ”one of those rooms in my home.”