Working from home has its benefits but can be damaging to our health. Especially if like me you can work all day without breaks. 

In this episode I talk about why I need to get away from the PC and why you do to. 

Not feeling too great today so will be taking a recovery day. Here are a few thoughts and a little tip I do to help me work out what could be wrong. 

The most successful brands don’t sell products they sell lifestyles. The strongest brands are instantly recognisable and stand for a specific value. Take for instance Nike - this is, without doubt, a strong brand. The swooshing tick is instantly recognisable. See this and you will know it relates to sportswear. 

A strong brand tells the world what you are about and what they can expect from you. Nike has a ‘tick’ that tells you they offer sports goods that look great and fits in with a sporting genre. 

Go anywhere in the world and see the Tick and you know it’s Nike. 

So how do you build a personal brand? Firstly you have to understand that successful people’s names are tied to certain traits. To know these people is to know what they are associated with. 

Mike Tyson - was the Baddest man on the planet, maybe not the most positive brand which may have led to his downfall but still a brand after all.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Mohamed Ali floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. 

You watched Mike Tyson you saw the raw power and aggression. You knew when he fought it would be explosive. He offered something no other boxer did at the time and people loved him because he was the self-proclaimed Baddest man on the planet.

People watched Mohammed Ali to see the skill, the silky smooth movement and dazzling speed. He offered a masterclass of skill and manipulation. He talked as well as he fought and put on wonderful shows.

In both cases, the paying public knew what they were going to get and each man was loved by their fans. Who was the best? The answer will differ depending on what brand you bought into.  

The first step is to define your message and put it into words. Write down on paper - Who do I want to be? And answer the question. Bullet point a few keywords to highlight the answer. 

Now how would it feel to my audience if I always told people what to do? If people came to me to be coached and left being lectured too they would be confused. My message would be wrong. I would not be practising what I preach. My brand would be hit hard for the wrong reasons.

To become a personal brand you need to turn heads, You need to understand what you stand for and stand for it. Be yourself and keep your message consistent. When you are consistent people notice. It will take time to become a brand. People need to know, like and trust you before they will consider you. 

When you stand for something, people will notice you and that will give you influence. When you have this you have a starting point. From there on you need to do your homework and work with others, pay attention to people and what they need, solve problems and help others. All these actions will help you become a strong brand.

At  Taylor Made coaching Aga & I are building our brands, we are often seen out in our area offering help to local people, we care about people’s lives and we genuinely want to help. The content we put out shows people how to improve areas of their lives for free. We often give our sessions away so we can help more people. 

We want to be known as coaches who care, we are becoming consistent and living our lives how we coach. Every day we spend time improving ourselves as people and helping others do the same. 

All of our work is aimed to give to others, we are getting well known as the coaches who help and give great value. Our coaching company started because we wrote down what we wanted to do, why we wanted to do it, how we would do it and we listened to people tell us what they needed. 

We created programmes to help these people and a brand that shows we are able to help small business owners and people looking to improve their lives. 

Probably the best example of the power of the subconscious mind is learning to ride a bike, Presuming you learned, you will remember how hard it was to start with. You may have wobbled, fell started and stopped. The process took all of the concentration of your conscious mind, then all of a sudden boom, you got it.
Your subconscious mind took over and riding became a natural thing you could master.

How did it learn? Repetition and positive thoughts are the answer. High achievers use both repetition and positive thoughts to achieve what they want. They understand the power of the subconscious mind very well. They know the subconscious can absorb and manifest any idea you give it.

All over the world people achieve great things, recover from serious injury and disease. Do they do this from thinking negatively and giving up? No, they believe they can.

As Henry Ford said, If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.

Obviously, it’s better to think you can than can’t, should you want to achieve something great.

Everything comes from our thoughts, we become what we believe. If you believe something is possible then we increase your chances of success,

I always say It is better to believe and try rather than the opposite. Even if I do not completely succeed in what I want, I know that the experience of trying will improve me in some ways.

I’ve trained my mind to look for positives in every situation, that way, even if I ultimately fail I still win. I still find little bits of learning and improvements that I can use for the future,

I knew my negative thinking was holding me back, but I didn’t know what to do about it. Luckily I am pretty positive in life however I had a bad habit of comparing myself to others within my industry.

When I started to use social media I felt overwhelmed with the content I saw from successful people. Rather than learn from people who were better than me at what I wanted to do, I felt insecure and like a failure, I was envious of what they had.

Envious people who focus on others successes find it hard to be happy. They may succeed themselves but as they compare and become jealous of others, their own success seems insignificant. I was exactly the same, I was achieving and doing well but comparing myself to others who in my opinion had achieved more.

This led to a downward spiral in my life, I felt really low. Before social media, I had my network of people and I was comfortable, I was one of the high achievers and proud. On social media I was a nobody, I had no voice or anything worthwhile to say.

I wasn’t a success as I wasn’t posting videos from my private jet on my way to some exotic location.

I started to believe I was a failure. I had so much to be grateful for but wasn’t., I couldn’t see the good I had because I focussed on what I never had. My thoughts became negative and my subconscious mind started to attract negativity to me.

I went from believing I can to a belief that I can’t. My thinking changed and I became sick. Just like that a switch in my thinking started to take away all my enjoyment in life. I no longer felt good about myself or what I had.

Read the full article here - https://www.taylormadecoaching.co.uk/6134-2/

Have you ever heard of ‘Parkinsons Law’? 

This law was discovered in the 1950’s by Historian Cyril Parkinson.

The Law states - The amount of work required to complete a task is relative to the amount of time available.

I.e. Give someone 2 days to write a report and they will take 2 days, Give a week to complete the same report and the whole week will be used for completion.

In business, many owners apply this law to profits. In this scenario, Time is replaced with money.

In the past, if you gave me £1000 to append on a project, I’d spend it, tell me I had 10K to spend and I’d spend that as well on the same project. 

So it seems simple, be conscious of Parkinson’s Law and make a concerted effort to keep the costs down?

There is another problem though, people, Myself very much included tend to focus on what we see first. Show us a list and we usually remember the top of the list over the rest. 

In business, profit starts with sales. I like many have focussed way too hard on just sales in the past. I did this because it was the first thing I saw. I needed sales. I wanted sales. 

I went all out to get sales because they would give me profit.

The trick I learned was the same as when I got myself out of debt. I started to deduct my profit from my sales and get used to operating without needing the extra money. 

In one of my businesses, I wanted 11% profit. So every time I got a sale I transferred 11% to an account that was set up to hold cash only. 

No direct debits came out of this account. The money sat there and built up. Doing this did a few things for me. 

It gave me less of a sense of security. My old way of paying everything into one account saw my cash build in one place. As the account grew so did my confidence to spend it. I had a large account and as in Parkinson’s Law where time was replaced with Money, I spent it all. 

Nowadays I like a main account and sub-accounts and here is why.

When I transfer money into my sub-accounts the money is set aside. The main operating account holds less cash. This helps me because, there is less money to spend, the money in the sub-accounts is held for - Paying myself, paying tax, Company profits.

Now a lot will say, what is the point when you log on to your bank you will see the profit account increasing. It will still tempt you to spend the money. To combat this I have my sub-accounts in a separate bank. This way when I log on to my main account I don’t see the sub-accounts. 

I am not tempted. 

This strategy also teaches me to do more with less. I have less money in my operating account so I have to be more creative. I look for efficiency and analyse what we do best for our customers. I put systems in to get better at what we do. 

So to summarise, the best way to make sure your company makes a profit is to take it first. Pay it into a separate account and do this regularly. If you want a 25% profit but have to many debts to take the whole 25% start with something smaller, even if It is just 1% do that.

Get used to the routing and existing on less money, every quarter increase the 1% slightly and go again until you can up it. Keep turning the dial-up till you get to the 25%.

You will train yourself to get into a routine, You will exist on less money and become more creative whilst not being tempted to spend the whole pot every month as I did in the past.

This strategy really does work and promotes great habits. For more information please email me : [email protected] 

Can you imagine having financial freedom in your life and living off of investments rather than a wage?

For me, this was a dream that I never thought would be possible. When you are in debt and not earning much money life is hard, To have more money go out than come in is a scary place to live. 

When you are a teenager or a young adult living with parents it can be manageable, however, when you have a mortgage and kids to feed the stress of no income can be unbearable. 

When I lost my business in 2008 and went from being a high earner to nothing I was scared and worried. I felt so down about what had happened to me and I blamed everything on the government and greedy bankers. 

The truth was, it was my fault, I never prepared, I never saved. I never invested. I spent more than I earned and I lived a high life for too long. I should have sorted my finances and investments to work for me before I splashed the cash. 

If I had done that I would have avoided the pain and depression of having no money. I could have continued to live a good life even without my income because my investments would have taken care of me. 

If I knew back then what I know now!! The trouble is we don’t know we can only learn. For me I made my own mistakes and I learned the hard way. Maybe you have done the same and are looking for a way out. Or maybe you have the foresight to learn from people like me who have made mistakes?

Whatever your reason for wanting a financially free life I can tell you from experience that you can achieve it. In fact, anyone can do it. 

Here is how I got myself back on track and started to take control of my finances again. When I lost my business and income, I panicked, I hide away pretending everything would be OK. To the outside world, I was OK, I had money, the big house, flash cars. Inside I was shocked. I had to pay for all this stuff and had no money coming in.

What was I going to do? How would I survive? I knew I had been stupid, I’d not prepared and saved a penny. I was broke and in danger of losing the house.

I started to plan to start a new business but before that I took a quick job selling kitchens. It was commission only and they had me travelling for miles at my own expense to sell. I became that guy who sits in someone’s house pushing for a sale. I hated it but was actually quite good.

I earned a commission every month and kept up with my loan payments. 

The problem was I was unhappy and not earning what I was used to. My lifestyle took a massive hit. The one big difference was I was determined not to waste money again. I wouldn’t let myself get into financial difficulty and I would invest rather than spend.

The problem was I didn’t have much leftover at the end of the month. I had to create a habit to make sure I saved whatever I could. To get in the habit I opened a separate bank account and transferred 1% of everything I earned to this account every month. 

Read the full article here - https://www.taylormadecoaching.co.uk/6124-2/

If you would like help designing this for yourself and planning how to pay your debts off reach out to me on Facebook - @coah.leetaylor or email me at [email protected] 

They say the route to vast wealth and great success is self-discipline applied to personal success, career and happiness. 

Before I came successful I had mundane jobs, made no effort, lacked discipline and dreamed a lot. I dreamed of success but never took action.

I made promises, new years resolutions and got myself excited however I never followed through. I forgot, gave up, did something else and blamed others or circumstances. 

I started to improve when I wrote things down. Before i did this everything was in my head. Once I wrote things down they became real. There is something about committing to goals on paper. Writing ideas and what you want takes away distractions and focusses on you.

However, you need to first decide what you want. Be very specific here. If you want more money, how much money. If you want to lose weight how much do you want to lose?

After you do this, step 2 is to write down a goal. Again be specific about what the goal is. For instance, I want to enter a bodybuilding competition and compete. Or I want to buy a house with no mortgage. 

In step 3 write everything you can do to achieve your goal. List any obstacles you will have to overcome. Skills you will need, people who can help you. Everything you need to make the goal happen.

Step 5 - Prioritize the most beneficial tasks and add them to your calendar. Complete the most important first.

Step 7 - Do some tasks immediately, This releases positive endorphins and gives you a quick sense of achievement. You can capitalise on this mood and get off to a great start.

Find out how I overcame my fears and created the discipline for success here -  https://www.taylormadecoaching.co.uk/the-power-of-self-discipline/

We are all different and alike in many ways. Personally, I know very well what I am good at what I am bad at. I try hard at everything I do and I give up easily on things I don’t like doing. 

What has made me successful over the years is more to do with knowing what I’m not good at. When you know and accept this you have a choice, carry on and get better or let someone else do it.

If I enjoy something, I’ll carry on and get better, If not I’ll get someone else to do it. By focussing on what I’m good at and enjoy I create more. I’m happier and healthier. If I persevere with what I don’t like or not so good at I get frustrated, angry and create less 

It is not hard to work out what is best for me in any situation. I just don’t do the stuff I don’t want to anymore. My only regret is I haven’t always lived my life like that. For years I got up and felt down and wanted to go back to sleep. I had jobs and businesses that didn’t excite me. I was drifting through life doing stuff I had no interest in for money.

I lacked energy and enthusiasm and life was mundane and boring. My life was like a scene from the Film Ground Hog day.

Things shifted for me when I started to read self-help books like Rich dad Poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki. This is a wonderful book about a young boy growing up with a rich and poor father. It shows the difference between the attitudes of the two dads. One dad an educated teacher who is poor and the other a wealthy man who educated himself about money business and life. 

Like many who read this book, it was an eye-opener. It made me think about the possibilities I could open up for myself. I started to take interests in business and start little side hustles. It was then things started to change for the better, however, I still had to do a lot of stuff I hated doing. 

I worked long hours and sacrificed so much to be successful.

I lost track of friends and family and alienated people in my quest to build a big business. Although I got through these times I could have done them so much better. I could have stepped back and enjoyed myself more. I will never get that time back.

If I knew what I knew then I would tell myself to focus on what I was good at and not waste time with the stuff I’m not. I could have found help and got better people to help me than I did. Building a business is hard work and very difficult to do alone. You need as much help as you can afford to grow rapidly. 

If I had my time over, I wouldn’t have worked so hard. My daughter will never remember the days I was at the office working, she will remember the days I wasn’t there as I was working. 

So my advice is this, work smart not hard, find out what you are good at and put most of your efforts into these areas. More importantly, be honest about what you are not good at and get help with these areas. When you have people doing the stuff you don’t like but they enjoy, things move faster, life is better. You biome more successful and so does everyone else. 

It really is a win win scenario. 

www.taylormadecoaching.co.uk