Bad Habits Hold You (and me) Back

As a business mentor I am adding a warning because if I am correct, you'll resist what you are about to read. How do I know that?

Because that’s what humans, people - YOU and me - that’s what we do, we resist change because change means confronting habits.

It’s about habits, changes, you resisting me and then you finally working with me and rewarding me for ground breaking alliance for the results I will and I can deliver for you.

It’s a long article but one but worth every minute of your time.

If needed you may print and read it later with a coffee or tea or whisky if that’s your thing – just read it because it affects you and your business.

Ok … Here we go…

Every now and then you get an awakening call in life and business that makes you feel uncomfortable to the point that you either change things or lie down and give up. Yet the reality is and has been shown and proven time and time again is that …

• Everything can change for the better
• Everything can be put back on track
• Everything will be OK - it always is

You can survive thrive and prosper into change but only if you haven’t lay down and totally given up yet. Have you lay down and died or am I still getting through to you?

So here's a story, short but true none the less.

I started with a new trainer last December. Frankly he is killing me but killing me in a good way to the point I now have zero-shirts that fit me because the muscle size is so large in relation to how it was previously. Yet we have one conversation weekly and it is about belly fat and body fat generally.

Despite having huge arms, a huge chest, big muscular legs and a well defined back I cannot shift my fat. The problem is the fat of course covers the muscle so despite the reality that there has been a ton of change in my body I cannot get the definition I really would want. I know I need to grow up and lie back and retire gracefully but that isn't for me.

And here is my problem.

H.A.B.I.T. that is compounded with decades of reenforcement.

I was born with a sweet tooth that won't go away and lie down gracefully and despite trying as hard as hell I still have huge cravings for sweet things until I realised this isn't anything special or new it is something I simply have to accept and then confront.

So right now I have not stopped the sweet things but I have adjusted accordingly and replaced sweet things with things like dates, figs, apricots and more. it seems to be working.

Habit can hold anyone back but the real problem is we oversee the habit and try always to blame it on something or someone else.

You changes might be getting stopped but habit - nothing else.

Do you know what you want in your life? Do you know what you want in your business? Are your embedded habits destroying everything? The habit kills, destroys and holds back anything it can hold back.

If I want muscle definition I have to make a change. If you want definition in areas of your life you must make a change.

Life and business: Yes both are absolutely intertwined and if you are in business, they can never be taken apart so if one isn’t right neither will the other be right. When business is bad your life becomes miserable.

That creates unhappy people.

I have another habit in my life that isn’t a drug habit although some will claim I’m on another planet, I’m not a sex addict although sometimes I think I could be or would like to try and be at least and I don’t gamble but this habit has me addicted.

It’s a habit called repetition.

That life repetition leads me down the same paths every now and then and despite the fact I think I am going down another path in a different direction. It’s usually when I am halfway along the path I realise hang on, this looks familiar and it’s at that point I make changes. Progress is made but life can feel like one step forward, two steps back. Thankfully I am aware of it. Thankfully I make the changes.

Some will say well that’s life but I know it isn’t it’s  a habit and it’s a destructive habit that needs to be addressed.

Do you understand that? I know you do and I know maybe you experience it also. Why? Because it’s a very human thing for us to be like that in life and business. To repeat and do the same old thing again.

The problem with this habit is it can make you frustrated, angry, resentful at the lack of change and success and ultimately it can lead to you being frozen to the spot if it’s not addressed.

• The same route
• The same path
• The same ideas
• and worse - stuck in the same place

They all leave you totally stuck stuck stuck!

I see it all the time and I mean all the time with clients I work with. Of course you’ll feel this isn’t you, how can it be?

Are You Stuck?

Here’s a pattern an embedded habit I see in businesses; A fortune gets spent on the business structure. That means cool office, the best equipment, latest gadgets, and lots of meetings with lots of PowerPoint from experts in dark suits waiting for applause and finally of course … The Car (BMW preferred) …parked outside imperceptibly decomposing and rotting money even as I type. At this stage ZERO marketing or true business building has been done!

I even saw a client once spend almost £30,000 on a freestanding reception desk that could barely hold a computer on it. That was habit of his ego and he replaced the desk a year later as it simply wasn’t practical. Now they have coffee, tea, cookies and lots of circular stains all over the 30k desk in the dark damp back room where his slaves sit and moan.

And then there’s the wages, the costs and just about every other expense in business. Yet the situation always seem to be the same when clients contact me and its this … we have everything our customers want and need we just don’t have enough customers. Our advertising doesn’t work, our marketing team seems clueless and we are getting deeper and deeper into the red or they are simply not getting the growth that would just be perfect for them.

Yet it’s all part of the habit

And that’s the habit of doing things the things that are expected to be habitually done. Crazy right? Yes its so crazy we all do it all of us including me.

Yet every now and then the moment arrives when we have to get serious and be honest and that can be hard for you to face.

One of my millionaire clients has the habit. He has cash pouring through his fingers all the time but is always broke. I have worked on and off with him now for well over twenty years and the habit is always the same.

Big office, big staff, big invoicing, big visions and lots of cars, lots of holidays, lots of wine and women in no particular order yet he is always broke and struggling for more and more yet his outgoings are so huge even great incomings never pay for things. I think he’ll die and get buried in a cardboard box – recycled of course!

He makes me laugh when we meet because the story is always the same yet he never confronts it, waits to go broke and then repeats the habit all over again.

His Habits Always Destroy What He Builds

Recently he went for another medical to see if he was dying again. He has this machine that reads and delivers a 3d image of all of his insides. Once he thought his brains was his kidney and thought that his kidney was so misshapen that he had a week or two to live.

Then once he found out his illness was all stress related he went and bought his 6^th sports car to make him feel better yet … he couldn’t pay his staffs wages that same month. I fear he is heading down another total breakdown, closure and then repeat.

And then very predictably just a few years ago he lost over fifty million pounds and this wasn’t the first time. Nuts right?

So Unless You Change Your HABIT Your Habit Will Always Control You

If the habit controls us our life remains the same. If our life remains the same and we are not happy with our current results and then the reality is, it’ll be the same if not worse the older we get because your body and mind simply wont be able to keep fighting all the stresses and strains of the habit. Time to act?

Can you make any changes or maybe the real question is are you humble and wise enough to realise that you have the habit in your life and changes must be forced through? Most people with habits don’t believe they have habits. Go ask a clairvoyant to ask any of rock n rolls famous 27 club (the rock stars that overdosed and died at 27 years of age).

My mother believes in herself in a big way and always has done. She doesn’t like me but I do admire her. She believes that you are weak to ask for advice and you should fight through everything and battle everyone until you find out the answers for yourself. I don’t accept that and I have watched the consequences of that acceptance of the habit in my mother’s business life.

Yet she was one of the very first pioneers of the health food shop on the high street. There was no such thing as a health food shop when she had her shop. People came from miles to get her advice, it was very cool. She knew every working of the body from a holistic view back to front and with her medical training she was just amazing. She always wanted to do it her way and NEVER took advice from anyone. I had to endure garlic tablets each day and go to school stinking of garlic in the classroom. That wasn’t great for a 10 year old Scottish immigrant I can tell you.

In the mid-1980s a now famous health store offered to buy mother out at a high rate just to get her out of the town because her expertise was such a threat to them. She refused any advice and decided she would fight them to the end (think of brave heart in a dress). Mothers shop of course closed and the giant of health foods and supplements have well over 659 stores in the UK today. Where’s mum’s? (I know you’ll be wondering why she doesn’t like me now – that’s a whole other story for another story time)

Why did she lose out? Her habit was so deeply entrenched that change for her now becomes the impossible reality.

I have seen this habit in action so many times yet times have changed and 2014 running a business is very different. The difference is of course the web. When I say the web I don’t just mean having a website but I mean the way connections are now made.

• You have to connect and stop sitting and waiting
• You have to be a leader and stop waiting to be led
• You have to have brains and guts to take action
• You have to build your cult or tribe around what you are offering
• You have to make it easy for your buyers you are now know as your friends
• You have to make sure the like you or they’ll unlike you over night
• You have to make sure they are follower’s not just passers-by
• Instant branding
• Instant ideas
• Instant memory installations
• Instant likes
• Instant everything for a world that is fast and thinking different
• The need for speed has never been greater
• Change must become your mantra because change is the mantra

The old ways used to be the best ways but the best ways are now the new ways. Delivery must be fast. People want viral, they want clickable, they want apps, connections, hangouts and everything at light speed. Zooooom!!!!!!!!

Habit Killing Your Business and Preventing a LIFE?

Yet is your habit running your business, running your job or even running your life? And you wont change because you didn’t realise you have to change and because you didn’t realise it you are not even thinking about change. All you are thinking about is what the hell am I going to do to make things better?

• Change starts as a thought
• Change is a point to begin
• Change is a plan
• Change is a strategy
• Change is an action

Change has to be done if you need change but habit hates change so it isn’t easy because you love to be habitual and you don’t even know it… YET!

When I started orange beetle in 2000 it was almost impossible to get anyone on email from my old AOL address – even in 2000. I had to call everyone because hardly anyone had an email address.

Today that can sound so ridiculous. Everyone has a connection and is connected at light speed. Nobody wanted an email address but everyone now has an email address. Changed pushed through because of necessity.

I asked all of my four kids what they use to communicate and why and they only use iMESSENGER now. Why? They said its fast and yet I thought email was fast but apparently not as fast as messenger because you can see the other person typing a reply right away in messenger. That’s cool and that’s a change for me.

Beyoncé sold millions of albums overnight using images on Instagram

Radiohead delivered a genius way to sell millions of albums but giving them away or the fan could pay what he felt the album was worth

Prince gave away a double album in a Sunday newspaper

Why?

It increased their sales. Do you think the music label wanted to do that? No way, they never wanted in a million years to break their habit but that habit was smashed by change and change changed everything. Of course change in the music business is nothing new just read the book named 'The Grateful Dead on Marketing a band' … very cool!

They all broke the regular habit of doing their marketing the same old way. The habitual way and the unchanged way and nobody liked change and if they don’t like change they soon go back into the habit.

This is the 21^st century but are you still living in the habit of the last century?

Why? Because you think it should work because it’s always worked right?

• People don’t live how they used to live 3 years ago never mind 10 years ago
• People don’t do business like they did 5 years ago
• Everything is changing but is your habit holding you back?

HABITS are tough to break but even tougher to recognise and admit.

I understand I absolutely get it - habits can be a killer and I have and still have plenty of them that need changing yet how about you? Are you simply happy to carry on as usual and hope and pray changes will take place? If that's the case the bad news is they never take place on their own. Do you maybe feel like you have tried a lot and still cannot mange that big breakthrough? Are you feeling so stuck that you are really just not sure what direction to take next.

I CAN HELP YOU CHANGE YOUR HABITS

I’d love to work with you, partner with you and guide you into change.

• I understand how it feels to be trapped by habits
• I have helped myself and many others move forward fast
• I have been involved in many changes over the past 30 years in business with some incredible success stories
• I have mentored many new business overruns and established business owners into more success and change of habit
• I am tapped into every source that is tuned into change
• I live and breathe change
• I study how buyers think and act and finally buy from you
• I am obsessed with mind triggers and mind directions and all the twists and change that take place in a mind before a purchase is made.
• I have written, completed strategies and alliances with people like Jay Abraham, Jay Conrad Levinson and many many more giants of business
• I eat breakthrough information for dinner each day
• I have been doing just that and smashing habits and creating changes for over 30 years

If your organization needs a habit change that could be holding you back from advancing

If your marketing is like most others embedded with old habits I will see them in a second for you

If your own mind is stuck, trapped and cannot break out I can guide and mentor you into your new change.

Will It Mean More - MORE OF WHAT?

And lets be frank here what does the breaking down of habits that are backed up with change mean for you?

Profits and more of them?

There’s nothing dirty about that word but maybe you need a strategy that is more in tune with a new world and that is ‘giving back’ because your new century customers expect you to be giving back. Do you do that or are you out of the habit?

Are your messages into the media the same old stuff that no one really cares about anymore? Habit!

Are you feeding into a old-mindset that passed away with the last century? Habit!

Are you doing everything you do in your life and your business out of pure habit?

Habit is the death of most things. It creates boredom and prevents change. Habits tells you that you cannot be wrong yet your bottom-line is telling you that something is wrong.

I have helped changed and transformed businesses and lives fast. I have turnaround business, lives and created spectacular changes and sales for my clients.

Just imagine what I could do for you with my 31 years of experiences?

I’ve won with direct mail with insane 47% response rates yet they told me that couldn’t be done. The client had a habit of sending out to 5000 a month regardless of the result. I said stop, cut it back to 100 mailers and made the client over 800k… smashed his habit and created change!

Look …

Shall we talk things over to see if I can actually help you or are you already resisted doing that because your habit tells you that you know best and what could I do for you that you don’t already do?

Maybe you have no bad habits, maybe life is great and maybe you don’t need change of any kind. That’s fine I hope you enjoyed what I shared so far and I didn’t waste your time. Maybe you have enough sales or you love your job and for you it’s not a habit its something you just do because you know you have to do it.

I never used to read. I never read until I was around 46 years of age as a serious way of learning. Today I read maybe five books every week. That was hard for me to get into but it worked.

I read newsletters about marketing that you will probably have never heard of. I am inside inner circles that create billions in sales (not millions) for business and am a student of the human being, the human mind and words that can change everything for you. I’m an early adopter of all things even the stuff that fails bt I love to give it a go and see where it leads.

I even once sat on the street all night long in a big line to buy a new Video 2000 so I could watch movies at home. It was minus 5 on January 2^nd 1980. Do you know anyone that has one of those dinosaurs now? Change!

Yet even after reading this far your habit is still probably telling you no to change and here is why.

You are maybe thinking now what will this cost you because your habit tells you that everything has a cost.

Yet my services and alliances have never cost any of my friends and cleints a penny and I will tell you why.

Yes they have paid me and paid me well but here are a few numbers to look at.

• Paid £5,000 and got a return over well over £200,000
• Paid £10,000 returns £300,000
• Paid £15,000 returns £489,000
• Paid £10,000 returns £1.2 million
• Paid £35,000 returns of £250,000 a month
• Paid £15,000 returns £74,500
• Paid £500 returns £15,400
• Paid £7,500 returns £2.4 million

Now your habit is telling you that to work with me will cost you but the reality is that it NEVER costs an of my clients money to work with me. Can you see why? The habit says no yet the proof tells another story.

• Yes an investment has to be made but the returns are always huge.
• Buying a huge office is not a good investment it’s a massive cost
• Buying a stack of cars is not a good investment it’s depreciation

The habit has told you what is what but it isn’t. The habit takes you down a path that you have been walkng down for years and will resist change. I can pretty much guarantee your habit is stopping you from taking action and working with me right now yet ask yourself this.

• What do I need right now?
• Am I getting what I need right now?
• What would I pay to get what I need right now?

One client came to me and told me he had to get to five million over 24 months. I worked out everything and realised that 8 million could easily be reached. His business was a new business but he had a habit of telling me I was wrong.

So we talked and talked and exchanged emails and calls.

Finally it came to a fee or as I like to call it a reward. I told him this. “If I can create sales of 8 million for you I would like to be rewarded well” He told me ”fine name your reward” I told him that I would like a reward of £400,000 plus a vintage Triumph motorbike as a bonus” His reply was something like this.. “Are you serious I don’t want to pay more than a few grand and that is outrageous” Maybe you think, “Holy shit Alan that’s outrageous” … do you? OK but now lets think about this.

He had a new business that was going head on into a very strong and established arena with a lot of huge competition in the world of muscles and fitness.

I had ideas for his new product that were current, new, and diverse and put a strategy together that would put him into the top of his market in 7-21-days flat.

At this point all he had to pay me was a monthly residual to cover costs and wages and a small down payment of just £20,000 for us to get started. The £20,000 would barely cover costs from my side but it was a commitment from him.

The rest was to be paid on a deliverable agreement of hitting figures. The first number was £2 million in turnover for him. This would give him lots of sales, lots of profits, and lots of fun buying toys and would help him pay back his Russian investors very comfortably

Yet…

He was being over ruled by his habit. His habit was telling him contrary to the facts. The facts were I was going to help his new business create sales of £8 million. His habit was telling him I am not paying this stranger for marketing that any monkey could do so he went to an agency… it didn’t end well!

Yet marketing companies and agencies do what they do – create flyers brochures and stick you on Facebook and wouldn’t ever dare promise turnover of £8 million pounds! Of course a promise of a number is hard to keep and cannot be guaranteed but if we never hot that number I never got paid so they were in a win-win.

The client had invested over a million into a deal in Moscow Russia to make this happen. His house was on the line but he drove a very nice Bentley so he would look good in his meetings.

We never worked together his habit stopped him and change wasn’t in his agenda. Two years later his partner emailed me to talk about a new business he was planning. I called, we talked and he told me that the fitness company had folded with huge debts and almost NO sales.

I did say wow but I wasn’t surprised after all this is the 21^st century and you can play 20^th century games around here.

Why did he fold?

Because the habit over ruled the mind and the mind deceived the man. He believed doing things the way things should be done was always enough and that would pull them through.

NO – not in the 21^st century where everything is about

• Fast
• Change
• Smashing old habits
• Creativity
• Invention
• New
• And being smart

And being smart means doing things different and doing things different means taking action and taking action means taking action against habits and the old ways.

Even kids hardly have habits these days but everything is new new new.

Did you resist me? Have you though this isn’t right? Are you getting bored now? Are you awakening to the reality that embedded habits are killing your business and giving you a life you don’t want?

Shall we talk?

I’m always interested in interesting alliances with interesting people or even boring people that want to do something interesting.

As you might know I am creative and always looking to get rewarded well from my customers. I am open to lots of adventure, motorbike riding across the USA and renting out paradise islands for our business meetings. Are you or are you so restricted by old habits you cant bring yourself to hit reply and speak to me?

I am sat here right now with my feet on the table whilst writing to you and drinking coffee. The coffee is strong Turkish coffee as prepared by my partner Tamuna. It keeps my high and buzzy. I had my first drink of coffee just 3.5 years ago. I decided to change a habit of green tea only because it was utterly boring. The habit still wanted tea but now it’s coffee. Coffee brought me love – literally. Change is good and confronting habit is good.

Soon I shall be finished doing what I am doing so I am ready to break some habits and make some new friends and incomes.

• Shall that be you and me?
• Shall we meet in the USA?
• Shall we meet in my house in Tbilisi Georgia?
• Shall we meet in London’s best restaurant?

Where shall we meet?

If you are thinking Starbucks forget it. Manchester? OK that’s cool in the right place. Or how about I come to your office or home?

Did you realise I can come and train your marketing team. You know the ones that rent delivering for you right now. I can do lots but that means you breaking a habit.

My mind is thinking big, it’s on big and I am looking for smart entrepreneurs that understand that every now and then you have to do something really different to make an impact and that won’t start in a cheap coffee shop where all the smelly reps look over spread sheets on cheap laptops.

Are you ready to break the habit – your habit? The habit that is holding you down, pinning you to the ground and threating your business and even threating the way you live your life?

If you business folds will you lose you home and all the stuff you love to play with? I am here I am ready and I can’t wait to work with you.

I can even help you start a new business. That works and some of my mentor guys do incredible stuff with their new business.

• Everything is possible for you
• Everything can change for you
• You can be your change for yourself

All you have to do now is take the first very small step and that is hit reply to this email with your number and some information about yourself in there or send me a text to

UK 07793 069 486 OUTSIDE UK 00 44 7793 069 486 All you have to do is put the words… LETS TALK CHANGE

Finally … I am looking forward to talking with you, meeting you and creating change through shifting and removing habits.

Ready?

Lets do it!

Where shall we meet? I can fly anywhere if I think the reward for helping you is great enough.

I know – it was a long email. Sorry if it wasn’t what you expected but if it wasn’t well I am not right for you. Either way hold in there I have some good stuff always coming up and would love you to be a part of that.

Shall I share a story with you before I go?

It’s a story of change and the breaking down of a restricting habit.

On December 2009 I was alone and pretty broken after a long 5-year war and battle in divorce. It was horrible and close to killed me. I never did anything alone, I was a home bird and loved having family around me.

I thought how do I break this because if I don’t I will be alone forever. So I bought a ticket to New York, flew there for New Years Eve on my own and confronted my habit of hiding away. I was terrified. A new friend named Sam emailed me seeing I was in New York and promised to look after me for a day or so.

The first time we met he asked if I wanted to go out in the evening to a club. I don’t do clubs so I said… YES. I wanted to break the habit. He said can I meet him at the empire state building at midnight? I go to bed at 10pm so I said YES as I wanted to break a habit. He took me to the biggest baddest black mans rappers club in the west side of Manhattan and I can tell you when you are the only white guy there I felt freaked. I dint want to go but I went and I loved it.

One thousand plus hard-core rap fans bouncing to a 50-cent type rapper. I loved every minute – loved it!

Then I walked home alone at 4am through the streets of New York getting approached by prostitutes and almost getting mugged. Why did I do that? So I can reform my mind, break habits and create a new way to do things. That trip changed a lot of life for me – I loved it!

But I didn’t want to do it. I was worried on the plane thinking what the hell am I doing going to NY all alone. Then 5-days of doing everything I had never done before.

It broke me and smashed my habits. Sometimes you just need to get out of the comfort of your habit and do something so new it changes everything for you.

I’m ready to help you. MENTOR – I am ready to work with you. STRATEGIC ALLIANCE – just ask.

If you read and are ready to change your habits we what the hell are you waiting for … Hit reply and let’s talk

Your man on a Vintage Triumph Motorbike heading to LA from New York

Alan Forrest Smith – The destroyer of Habits!

MY ACCLAIMED MENTOR PRGRAM CAN BE FOUND HERE