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      "body": "Congratulations @smartgroup! You received a personal award!\n\n<table><tr><td>https://steemitimages.com/70x70/http://steemitboard.com/@smartgroup/birthday1.png</td><td>Happy Birthday! - You are on the Steem blockchain for 1 year!</td></tr></table>\n\n<sub>_You can view [your badges on your Steem Board](https://steemitboard.com/@smartgroup) and compare to others on the [Steem Ranking](https://steemitboard.com/ranking/index.php?name=smartgroup)_</sub>\n\n\n###### [Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1) to get one more award and increased upvotes!",
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      "author": "smartgroup",
      "permlink": "how-to-bloom-where-you-are-planted-3-secrets",
      "title": "How To Bloom Where You Are Planted, 3 Secrets",
      "body": "![hepatica-693291_1920.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZCstvtnTpY8H5n6zq5njkkX38KHgKCVEcB2S41kqvyJ5/hepatica-693291_1920.jpg)\n\nFirst off, I know that life is a gift. It’s not always a fun gift, and although it is the perfect gift, it is often, the most complicated. How it turns out for you has a lot to do with your head game. That day, my head game was tired of running, hiding, and living a lie. I knew that my decision to be honest with myself would make my life a living hell or at least that’s what I thought at the time. I was tired of holding up the facade and I wanted to be me.\n\nI remember sitting alone in the car with all the trappings of success surrounding me: business suit, expensive sports car, owner of a business, and I was only 19. This was significant because it was before the internet. Back then, people thought I was some overachieving woman that had something special about me. The truth was, I was hiding what I thought was evil about me behind the mask of success. I thought by achieving more success, people wouldn’t notice the evil I was hiding.\n\nI remember sitting there in the car deeply contemplating how much emotional pain I was in, when I whispered those words to myself, “I’m gay.” I knew how hated being gay was back then. It was hard to keep a job or get an apartment. Everyone you knew was disgusted by it. Back then the fear of “fag bashing” kept you quiet and in the closet, because the violence was unspeakable and brutal.\n\nWhen I quietly said it to myself, I finally landed in my body. My shoulders dropped and my stomach relaxed. I could feel an inner silence finally come over my heart and soul as my mind wasn’t working overtime to shield me from the hate and judgement of others. I remember feeling the weight of the facade dissolving and this was a good feeling. I wasn’t hiding from myself even if I was still hiding from the rest of the world. For that moment, I felt like it was okay to be me, even if it was only me that thought so.\n\nI could hear those words my mother told me many years ago, “Vickie, to thine own self be true.” It meant that I should never lie to myself and this was my first journey into learning how to bloom where I was planted.  I never wanted to be gay. I don’t think anybody ever chooses that for their life. However, the power of accepting what is, makes the soil by which you will bloom, rich and fertile. You won’t know it at the time, but it’s still true because you’ve passed through the “dark night of the soul” when you can speak the truth, even if it’s only to yourself.\n\nThe willingness to speak your truth, even when the whole world hates you, is painful and powerful. In that era, gay living was a complicated gift, and still is. It has been the perfect gift. I have to watch how people react to me because I’m gay. There are still many people who are uncomfortable with it even though it’s legal now.\n\nWhat I learned about living with the world hating who I was, was that I first had to become the good soil that would help me bloom. You have to be careful that you don’t join them and hate yourself as well. We live in a world where people love to belong and fit in. When you don’t, you can lose yourself by trying to please others. Lucky for me, there was no way to fit into society being gay.\n\nBack then, you had to be aware of the choices you made because if you were found to be gay in certain places, like the military, things didn’t turn out well for you. I remember wanting to go into the military after high school and choosing not to because if they found out I was gay, I didn’t want to be locked away somewhere for psychological evaluation. Which was the protocol back then.\n\nThe truth is, although I knew I was gay, hiding from the humiliation I felt, when others found out and fired me for being gay, was tough. I felt the embarrassment and humiliation of everyone else around me finding out that I was gay because I became the office gossip of the week. This situation was something that pushed me to become an entrepreneur. I was tired of being fired and gossiped about for my sexual orientation. Being gay forced me to learn how to do things beyond my comfort zone, such as starting a business or building a life.\n\nI couldn’t get married legally and enjoy all the same rights straight people enjoyed. I spent a short time being a police officer and I had to learn to protect my family using different methods. I couldn’t buy a life insurance policy and have my wife’s name on it. She couldn’t go to the ICU and be allowed to see me if I were suddenly laying on my deathbed. I had to find loopholes and workarounds to protect her and our family. It cost me double what it cost a straight couple to protect my family.\n\nThis is when I learned the second most important thing about learning how to bloom where you are and that is, if life is truly good to you, it will force you out of your comfort zone. Don’t fight it, make friends with it. That simple want to protect my family helped me become the successful business consultant and bestselling author I am today. I had to look for alternatives. That forced me to learn how to see opportunities where others would not see them.\n\nIt taught me how to have a more vast view of possibilities. I had to explore opportunities from a different perspective. It helped me deepen my mindfulness and awareness because I wasn’t subject to the average daily rules that most people enjoyed. I couldn’t fall asleep in my life or live a status quo life. It helped me learn to think outside of the box and see how I could utilize what was actually in the box to my benefit. It grew my thinking mind.\n\nThis is how the bulbs get planted into the soil. You don’t know it at the time, but these beautiful and colorful bulbs that are planted will suddenly bloom without you knowing it or even where it came from. Quietly I was becoming proud of myself. The illusionary obstacles in my way were actually blessings in disguise.\n\nSuddenly, I was growing a level of self-love that I’d never experienced before, simply because I was forced to become the best form of me in order to live in a world that hated me.  When this tinge of self-love happened, it planted a seed in my soul. I wanted to grow it deeply into my psyche and being. I wanted it to be the root in the soil that would allow me to bloom. This opened up the third most important aspect of how to bloom where you are and that is diving into self-discovery. Unearthing the gifts of you that allow you to thrive under any circumstances is the path to learning to bloom in many conditions.\n\nEveryone has those gifts hidden in their soul. When you plant those gifts into the rich soil of you, it becomes you. You learn to bloom in many conditions and environments. You bloom where you are, because it has become who you are. You’ve learned to bloom wherever you are planted.\n\nI can remember the moment I became comfortable in my own skin. Comfortable with who I am and living the core of me lovingly, kindly, and proudly. I’ve never stopped blooming from that point on. Wherever you are planted right now, you are the flower, the soil and the ecosystem that you have to grow in. All you have to do is be your true self. Accept who you are and what is in your life. Then step out of your comfort zone. Dive in to self-discovery and unearth the gifts of you hidden in your soul. Plant the seeds of self-love and watch yourself bloom.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "parent_permlink": "lifelessons",
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      "permlink": "the-secret-link-between-karma-cause-condition-and-success",
      "title": "The Secret Link Between Karma, Cause, Condition and Success",
      "body": "![rings-684944_1920.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmU4L9JKFenhup5JqmYKYmYS69ikkP6TerGDxpLZw4ZKxd/rings-684944_1920.jpg)\n\nMost people want to be happy and live a fulfilling life. We have aspirations, dream about, and work towards goals for living our best life. However, in order to achieve these dreams, we must learn about ourselves in a different way. It means challenging what we currently think about ourselves. How can we encourage and develop so that we become what we envision for ourselves?\n\nIn order to live a smart and successful life, you will benefit most by understanding that you cannot achieve success beyond your current concept of yourself. If we want to live our best life, we must live it from the best concept of ourselves. This means if we want to have more success, the part of us that benefits from shifting is fundamentally and foundationally the core concept of what we believe is possible for us.\n\nWhen we choose to transform the concept of ourselves we have moved into the area of “personal development.” When we choose to challenge our current state of being, we choose to rise above our current circumstances. We are also challenging what we think is possible for us and we are rising in consciousness as well.\n\nThis journey of personal development is also a journey of spiritual development. The two go hand-in-hand because you can’t do one without the other. The transformation of these two aspects is what helps us develop authentic confidence.\n\nAn important question we can ask ourselves is, “What about me is shifting?” Meaning, what is the aspect of us that is shifting?  When you enter the arena of transformation, it is all of you that shifts. In eastern philosophy, there is a concept called Karma, which is the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences… Sometimes it’s called fate or destiny.\n\nFor me, there’s essentially two types of Karma. The first one surrounds the sum of my past actions which influences my current life. For example:\n\n· In what country I am born\n· What parents I choose\n· My childhood circumstances\n· What primary first language I learn\n· The health of my body at birth\n· The ability to learn\n· My sexual orientation\n\nI call these “First Karma” circumstances. These are the things that you have to live and work with. Everyone has first Karma circumstances. The color of your eyes. How tall you are. The sound and tone of your voice. What day you were born. These are the things about your karma that are specific to your personality in this current existence and don’t change.\n\nWe used to not be able to change our current gender, however, we have moved into that type of medicine and created the ability to be transgender if we choose. However, there are fundamental things that do not change about your Karmic birth.\n\nThe second form of Karma surrounds your current actions and interactions… For example, working for a hothead boss in a dead-end job. People you have relationships with. The type of friends you have. The choices of food you eat. If you have an addictive personality and drink, smoke or both. How you dress. The people you hang out with; all of these actions surround the current concept you have of yourself.\n\nThe fundamental thing that is important to understand, is these are all transformable aspects of our personality. They are the Karmas we choose to interact with and they are based solely on our current concept of ourselves. They are malleable and subject to change on our command.\n\nThey are based on what we believe is true and thus will act, live and prosper according to the current concept. These types of Karmas only shift when we choose to shift them. If we don’t choose to shift them, we simply continue to live with them by producing our current circumstances over and over again. We call this continued cyclical interaction with our second type of Karma, our “Comfort Zone.”\n\nYour comfort zone is the reflection and cause of your current reality and condition. It showcases what you believe and think about yourself.  Our focus and our attention, as well as our point of view, surround many of these concepts and this produces what we call reality. Thus, reality is simply what we think is possible for ourselves in each moment based on our current concept. Therefore reality is malleable too.\n\nWe change reality by shifting the concept of what we think is possible for ourselves. When we change the concept of ourselves, our life changes. It’s not the habit that changes, it’s the concept of who we are that changes and this produces transformation.\n\n![butterfly-17057_1920.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdCU2WPqCgMPQhNLHqUHcVw5EcU6VPbnNLUHynHtiJCZp/butterfly-17057_1920.jpg)\n\nThe way you change the concept of yourself is by challenging what you believe to be true about yourself. We call this stepping out of your comfort zone… When you’re young; you challenge yourself by going to college or entering the service. You challenge yourself by learning to speak another language or learning to play an instrument like the piano.\n\nLearning new things challenges the status quo or comfort zone. When you read books, you learn more and challenge your point of view. You challenge your ability to shift and transform by earning a degree or going through basic training. These are building blocks to learning to command your mind into shifting its perspective as a way of life. When you shift your perspective, you can shift the concept of you into a stronger more successful concept of self.\n\nThis shifting comes from your soul. Your mind likes things the way they are. It doesn’t want to change. It wants to be in control, so it feels safe. It likes the comfort zone… but it has an ego, so it also likes a more powerful concept of the self. It becomes willing to exchange more powerful thoughts if it thinks it can be more or get more of something for itself.\n\nThe “Secret Sauce” for growing more success means being able to command your attention, point of view, and focus. We know that what we focus on grows. In order to enjoy more success, that means we have to guide our focus, and not let our focus be a knee-jerk reaction. We have to guide our point of view and not let something or someone else guide it for us. This requires that we grow more awareness of ourselves and mindfulness about what we want to focus on.\n\nIf you can see yourself as malleable versus a fixed point of view, you can shift the concept of yourself into whatever you envision. We call this reinventing yourself. The Native Americans call it shape-shifting. Most of us think of boxing legend, George Foreman, as “that grill guy.” However, back in the ’70s, he was the heavyweight champ who lost his title to Muhammad Ali in the most historical boxing match of that time.\n\nIn the mid-1980s, Foreman partnered with Russell Hobbs, Inc. to produce the fat-reducing “George Foreman grills”, which have since sold over 100 million units. According to Wikipedia, Foreman was paid $137 million in 1999 in order to buy out the right to use his name. It’s estimated that he has made a total of over $200 million from the endorsement, substantially more than he earned as a boxer. He became the spokesperson and the salesman of those grills. He reinvented who he was.\n\nThis type of reinventing has happened over and over again. Did you know that Jerry Springer’s first career was in politics? He was an aide in Robert Kennedy’s presidential election. Then, at age 33, became the mayor of Cincinnati. It wasn’t until he lost a bid for governor, that he became a TV news anchor.\n\nIn 1991, he launched the famous “Jerry Springer Show”. In fact, the show was originally supposed to be a political debate show. However, after some low ratings, he focused on topics like domestic issues and saw his ratings soar. People who understand reinventing themselves simply have learned to shift their reality. This is the secret key to success.\n\nThe first steps to shifting your reality is shifting the concept of what you think is possible for yourself. This theme is the core of the movie, “Mortgage Apple Cakes Bakery”. In 2009 actress Angela Logan was about to lose her home because her talent agency closed without paying her the money she was owed. Angel was buried in bills and the single mother of 3 sons.\n\nBecause she needed immediate income she thought about creating more money by selling cakes made by her family’s famous apple cake recipe. She knew if she could sell a hundred cakes for $40 each in 10 days, she could secure a loan modification and save her house.\n\nThat’s just what she did. She had to shift her perspective from: “Oh no, my home is going to be foreclosed!” to “How am I going to create the money to secure a loan modification for my house?” This is shifting your point of view, which gave her a new concept of herself. She could reinvent her circumstances.\n\nLogan’s Mortgage Apple Cakes is now a thriving business because of this shift in perspective and what she thought was possible for herself. To shift anything in your life, you will benefit most by practicing and getting better at shifting your concept of self, your point of view, where you place your focus, and your attention. These are the skill sets of success that you want to challenge every day. From actress to business owner, here are the things I do to challenge my concept of self and grow more:\n\nThe most important thing I do to challenge my concept of self is continually ask myself, “What am I saying to myself?” Listening in on your own conversations will help you understand what kind of concept you have. When I’m scared of something or scared to do something, I ask myself, “What is it that I am telling myself about this situation or thing?”\n\nUnderneath that, I will identify the thought that is sabotaging my effort. That thought could be, “I’m not good enough” or it simply could be any sabotaging thought. Then I say out loud to myself, “No wonder you’re scared, look at what you’re telling yourself!” You’d probably be scared too if you were telling yourself what I was telling myself.\n\nWhat I know for sure is that the concept I have of myself will either empower or impair me and my abilities. I get to choose which one I use. This is learning to command your abilities. Becoming aware and mindful that you are not just simply making a choice, but, creating the future concept of yourself.\n\nSuch as: outlining your comfort zones, and creating your point of view, focus, and attention. You are essentially reaffirming what you want your current reality to be.\n\nThe next thing I do is contemplation and meditation to help me calm my stinking mind down enough so that I can listen in and hear what it wants to say. Wayne Dyer said, “Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.” This is so important to understand because this is actually who you are. Just like Wayne Dyer says, “We are souls having a human experience.” When I ponder this deeply I realize that I am only a soul and not a body. Your soul is good at transformation.\n\nThen, I visualize, day dream, and fantasize about what I want to create. I let it simmer in my soul and let the RAS, or Reticular Activating System, begin the process of helping reality provide me with the, “How to” aspect of creating my dreams so that I can begin to shift them. I do this in the morning and throughout the day. This keeps my attention and focus pointed toward my vision.\n\nLastly, I take powerful actions towards the new concept I want to engage with. I don’t try to stop a past habit. Instead, I engage in new actions that reflect my new self-concept. I DON’T try to change my mind. I engage my mind with a new point of view. I let that ignite new drive and more actions in the direction I am now living. This is how I shift my reality and create new transformations.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "permlink": "what-really-needs-to-change-before-real-success-happens",
      "title": "What Really Needs To Change Before Real Success Happens?",
      "body": "![the-eleventh-hour-758926_1920.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmexEU6PXUGtq1qCHznQKHdMUADBSBNyTmFrwyZyq3siav/the-eleventh-hour-758926_1920.jpg)\n\nMore than two decades ago I found myself asking this very question. Sitting in my corporate grey cubicle at my job waiting for another new year to begin and me wondering what really needed to change before real success happened. I didn’t want to spend another year feeling so unfulfilled and I didn’t want to pretend I liked the holiday office parties and lifestyle.\n\nNow that I have been an entrepreneur for more than two decades, I can answer the question I asked myself more than two decades before as I reflect back on my early days as an entrepreneur.\n\nHere is what I found:\n\nKnow yourself-gifts and talents: This is so important to understand because when you start a business, what you like and how you operate will help you chose the right business for you. I had a degree in accounting and could have started a business in accounting, but I hated accounting. I didn’t like the tiny receipts, data entry and generating reports that were involved. I would have been miserable with an accounting firm. Building a business means building a lifestyle you enjoy working in.\n\nBe in service to others: Over the years I have learned that if I pick a market of people to serve and open a business that solves a problem, I have easier success and I feel good about my business. Profits are important and happen with the correct mix of being in service and providing an amazing service or solution for people.\n\nKnow your self-worth deeply: Business startup is fast paced and stressful. It will take even the bravest person out of the game if they don’t know themselves and how they operate on both a positive and negative level. You have to not only manage a business, but manage your mind and self-worth because people who mean well can say horrible things that will bring you down if you don’t know your self-worth and how to manage you.\n\nBe willing to change: I loved relying on what I had already learned and knew. I didn’t want to have to change. What I found was if I used my current beliefs and mindset to get me where I wanted to go, I was lying to myself. It wouldn’t work because my mindset had brought me where I currently was and gave me what I was currently experiencing. So, what part of me had to change in order to succeed?\n\nMy work ethic and work habits needed to change. I learned the work ethic of the average and ordinary from my parents. It’s not a bad thing, but it wouldn’t get me where I wanted to go. It’s like learning how to have a backyard garden from your parents and wanting to become a multi-acre farmer. A farm is much bigger and requires a totally different work ethic than a backyard garden. Your attitude has to be different in order to cultivate this massive dream.\n\nThe average person works a job for money and finds what they do so painful that they actually hate going to work.  In order to succeed, it helped me to embrace and learn about the work ethic of someone who loved what they were doing so much that it didn’t feel like work. They were willing to do whatever it took to have success and keep on growing every day.\n\nKnow you are supported: When I embraced this new work ethic, being of service, and was suddenly willing to change, I also found a connection to something greater than myself silently supporting me and sending me whatever I needed to become successful. I call this Divine Grace.\n\nWhen this Divine Grace sends you what you need in the moment, you feel the support of the universe helping you succeed and it helps you have authentic motivation because you are serving a greater cause and a greater good.\n\nMore importantly, sometimes I became the Divine Grace for another entrepreneur. This helped me create strong relationships with other business owners who were on the same business development path. We became a community of support for each other.\n\nManage your center & course correct: You hear that leadership is everything, and that is true for me. However, the kind of leadership I practiced most was self-leadership. The secret sauce to this was that it built influence over time, and everyone began to want to work with me. It created opportunities for me that would not have been there if I hadn’t felt supported and gave support to others.\n\nWhen things are stressful and uncertain and you remain authentically upbeat and undeterred, you will stand out in the crowd. This is faith at its greatest example and it does move mountains, but mostly your mountains of doubt and fear. This is how success begins to peek out of you.\n\nKnow what your boundaries are: Success means knowing when to say yes and no. It’s knowing what your business is about and not moving off message or off brand at the first sight of something new. Having an awareness of your boundaries around most aspects of your business means that your team learns to trust you and knows where you stand. It creates safety around employees and vendors you work with. Having boundaries helps save money because you and your team know what you are about.\n\nSkill sets for success are really personal development skill sets. Over the years what I have found is that these skill sets improve over time. No matter what, they help me be successful at business, life and connected to the Divine Grace. I feel fulfilled and have a life by co-design from this place.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "body": "Hello @smartgroup! This is a friendly reminder that you have 3000 Partiko Points unclaimed in your Partiko account!\n\nPartiko is a fast and beautiful mobile app for Steem, and it’s the most popular Steem mobile app out there! Download Partiko using the link below and login using SteemConnect to claim your 3000 Partiko points! You can easily convert them into Steem token!\n\nhttps://partiko.app/referral/partiko",
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      "title": "Thriving In Economic Uncertainty",
      "body": "![Thrive Economic Uncertainty.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTeiT7SJs5qmzHRC9Yd2mseryE3FqQAgoWdfwcSeZzdKi/Thrive%20Economic%20Uncertainty.jpg)\n\nToday, I have a prediction for you. It just may be the game-changer that determines whether you live the rest of your life in comfort, spend it just getting by, or in absolute poverty. Here’s the story…\n\nThe last decade has shown amazing growth in markets and for entrepreneurs. That is because the American economy adopted the “simple fix”. We’ve learned how to jimmy rig everything in our economy in such a way as to make it look as if those fixes were going to last long term.\n\nSo, here is my prediction: Within the next 18 months, I believe we are going to see a deep economic correction. If you consider yourself “aware or in the know”, you probably already have a good idea that this is coming.\n\nMaybe you’re asking yourself, “How can I thrive in this era, instead of just survive?”\n\nThe economy has always followed cycles. This is the 11th year since our last cycle correction. Entrepreneurs have been taking advantage of this boom. There has been an abundance of opportunities. Barriers to entry have been lowered, credit is easy, and cash is flowing… but not for much longer.\n\nMost people in the know understand that this upward trend is not going to last forever, because it was jimmy rigged in the first place. The Fed is completely confused right now. It was embarrassed as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell boasted that America’s economy could withstand much higher interest rates. But December market losses, historically one of the best performing market months, proved otherwise.\n\nOutlining this confusion is the difference between the U.S. Economy and the U.S. Stock Market. If we have what President Trump called the “the hottest economy on the planet” during his 2019 State Of The Union address, why are our markets fluctuating so much?\n\nThe fluctuations will continue, and the market corrections will happen. The ax will fall, and the comedown will be brutal for the unprepared worker, business owner, and debt-heavy entrepreneur.\n\nThis economic tornado will come down hard on the business world. It will do what it did in 2008… sweep away easy credit, easy jobs, easy business, and easy cash flow. Only the strongest will remain standing.\n\nThere will only be ONE way you can remain strong and survive the coming correction. It will not be Bitcoin, metals, and bullets. (Although it couldn’t hurt to have them; I do).\n\nTrust me, this will happen in the future.\n\nRight now you may think I’m fear-mongering. I don’t want you burying your head in the sand, walking around as if nothing is going to happen, blind to what is barreling toward us.\n\nHere’s the good news. When the collapse does happen, it weeds out all the competition. It will be just like the show, Last Comic Standing. You want to be the last one standing.\n\nIf you’re reading this right now, then you still have time to set things up so that you are the last one standing. You can be grateful that you’re in the right place at the right time, with income and wealth, because you took action.\n\nRegardless of what happens, millions of people are going to be looking for answers, just like they did in 2008. In the British Army, they have an adage called the “7 Ps” — Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. This means, if you are the person who is selling the supplies needed to survive during the storm, you become the last (and wealthiest) one standing.\n\nThis is important to understand, because we have been living in an artificially created boom time. Because of this, we haven’t had to develop truly superior business skills or work ethic in order to succeed. Anyone can post a Facebook ad or YouTube video that leads to an online store selling marginal advice, products, systems, and other programs with ease. That is how they define themselves as an entrepreneur.\n\nIt is easy because capital is available, credit is easy, and there is more money to throw at Facebook ads. This does not take entrepreneurial skill.\n\nHowever, just like 2008 when credit dried up, how many businesses will dry up in this next downturn?\n\nOur leaders cannot keep this artificial boom going forever. Right now, there are shysters and competitors getting away with marginal business practices. Markets have become over-saturated. A crop of cheap products has been thrown into the market, without protecting the buyer. The consumer has been purchasing with ease, because they don’t see the economic tornado developing on the horizon.\n\nThe only reason this is working is because of the current environment of easy money, easy business, and easy credit. This will not survive the “class 5 tornado” that is coming this way.\n\nIf you’re reading this now, you shouldn’t be worried. If you set it up correctly right now, you will survive and thrive no matter what happens. Sure, you’ll see less-easy capital, and credit will be tight. But that won’t stop the millions of people looking for answers as to what to do now.\n\nI’d like to share a three-part checklist that will measure your ability to thrive in the upcoming economic downturn. It’s simple and easy to review my complimentary checklist to see if you’ll survive or not. Right now if you can fix the holes in your boat, you’ll be ready for the storm when it hits.\n\nGo to: http://bit.ly/SmartStartChecklist to access your complimentary checklist to ensure you are prepared to thrive in economic uncertainty.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "parent_permlink": "lifelessons",
      "author": "smartgroup",
      "permlink": "getting-a-smart-start-how-i-set-myself-financially-free-3-tips",
      "title": "Getting A Smart Start: How I Set Myself Financially Free, 3 Tips",
      "body": "![Get a Smart Start.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmeuPbNdTGxbzqYCEbRQn4mjP8rRbYSUQb9BbsYpeKijC7/Get%20a%20Smart%20Start.jpg)\n\nMore than twenty years ago, I shocked a lot of people by retiring from my job. Many of my colleagues kept saying, “What are you doing? Are you crazy? You’ve got another 20 years you could be working and saving. You could make even more money.” They were right. Sure, I could have done that, but I didn’t need the money.\n\nYou see, by then I had already paid off my student debt and saved my money. I learned a few secrets to making money that left me with a skill set to fall back on that didn’t require me to have a job. To be fair and honest, after I graduated college and for the next decade, I worked two jobs most of the time, so I could save some money.\n\nI didn’t see the point of working for someone else in order to save a few more pennies for retirement. What was important to me was how I was spending my time. I wanted to do things that allowed me to have my own time and income outside of a job. I wanted to be free of the rat race forever. At a glance it may have looked like I was crazy for leaving my job so young. Many people said what I was doing didn’t make sense.\n\nThe internet was new and in its infancy. We hadn’t even reached the dotcom boom yet. Many of my friends thought I was lucky. Others thought I was going through some phase, and that I would soon come to my senses and come back to work. I had a little profit sharing from a previous gig that helped me invest my money at a very young age. I never wanted to go to work for anyone again. What confused everybody was that on the surface I was an ordinary person.\n\nI wasn’t an overachieving student. I didn’t do well in college. I got by with the average grades I had. I wasn’t exceptional at anything.  However, I had a good work ethic and I didn’t have any unusual debt. I was, and still am, an average person. I didn’t have any unusual habits or hobbies that would suck the money out of my pockets. I didn’t suffer addictions that would rob me of my money either. I am a person, who found an extraordinary way to make money when I needed to, without working a job.\n\nWhat’s good about this aspect of me is that I’m not an extravagant person either. I’m not a “Things and Stuff” person. I enjoy simplicity and experiences. I don’t want to be encumbered with lots of stuff and things. I don’t need, nor do I want a 15,000 sq. ft. home. I don’t want the Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz, thousand-dollar Rolex, and all the material possessions you could buy that come with feeling as if you have lots of money. Having this attitude has helped me remain financially free.\n\nThe way I see it, if you are going to create a life, you’ve got to create one that you will enjoy and want to protect. I want freedom more than a Mercedes-Benz, Rolex, or a big house. I want freedom more than any single trinket you could buy. I believe being trapped in a dead-end job is enslavement. I didn’t want to live that way. I’ve been free from working a dead-end job for so long now that many of my friends ask me what my secrets to retiring and remaining free are.\n\nTo be honest, the internet began to take off with ways to make money online. I unearthed a secret that most people couldn’t see that was right in front of their nose. It had been quietly growing and to this day most people can’t see it because they are so focused on something else.\n\nThe reality is, once you see what I have been doing for a couple of decades and learn the secret of how it works, you too, could get a smart start on building your freedom and dreams right now. In fact, I’ve shared this secret with several people from all age groups that didn’t have any experience. Some in their 20s who don’t want to join the rat race and 70-year-old retirees that wanted extra cash. They are amazed that others do not see the potential of this hidden secret that helped set me financially free.\n\nDo you want to learn the secrets? It’s not hard to learn. You can begin to set yourself financially free. I was so excited when I first found this secret, that I spent 16 hours a day studying and learning how to take advantage of its amazing simplicity. I’m going to share some of that with you right now.\n\nOnce you learn the secret to how it works, you can easily be reinventing your work life relationship and set yourself financially free.\n\nHere are 3 tips:\n\n1. Create a relevant skill set: Financial freedom is a skill set. It isn’t about how much money you save for retirement. It is about having skill sets that will help you create income whenever and wherever you are on the planet. I have relevant skill sets that I can charge more than $1,000 an hour. I only have to work 10 hours a month to make 6 figures a year. The key is researching and finding what relevant skill sets people are looking for so that you can learn them and help others find answers.  Everyone has relevant skill sets and information that can benefit the world. It is when you learn to turn your experience into profits correctly, that you have a smart start on becoming financially free.\n\n2. Research what people are looking for and build income sources around it: I became financially free when I stopped trying to have “a good idea” to make money and learn the little secret of researching what it is that people wanted to buy. When I found a market I could serve, I built a business around what they actually wanted to have or know. The secret is that most people think this happens just once. If you want financial freedom know the people you serve will want more from you overtime. When you serve them well, you have created an income source long term and this builds financial freedom as your lifestyle.\n\n3. Keep your debt and expenses low: I believe simplicity is the key to financial happiness. You’ll never become wealthy by accepting other people’s definitions of what wealth looks like. I promise you, you’ll be much happier and better off if you learn what it is that makes you happy. Having a bunch of stuff and things hasn’t made anyone happier. Sometimes the simplicity of being able to spend more time with your loved ones is what is fulfilling about being financially free. The more financial debts you have, the slower the process becomes of setting yourself financially free.\n\nOf course, by now you probably have the same question most people do after they see me or read this post. It usually is, “What is the secret that is right in front of my nose that you’ve discovered, Vickie?”\n\nThis is what I want to share with you.\n\nIn short: I’ve developed a way to take command of my financial well-being by learning a powerful but hidden secret. I analyze what people are looking for, and then turning that research into income sources that are equitably and mutually beneficial to the consumer and myself at a reasonable cost. This single hidden secret has given me a unique advantage and protected my financial freedom. And:\n\n-I don’t have to spend a fortune to start\n-I don’t have to take loans for venture capital in order to start\n-I don’t have over-the-top expenses\n-I don’t have to hustle and grind for leads and sales\n-I don’t have to do anything that feels unethical or salesy\n-I don’t have to invest in office or inventory space\n-My setup is fast, simple, movable, and profitable\n-My learning curve is consistent and reliable\n\nI use a technique that most people don’t even know exists. I cracked the code to finding how to turn my experience into income. Then I implemented smart wealth strategies and secrets that most people don’t know about. I wanted to grow my wealth without any of the Wall Street shenanigans that threaten so many other people’s futures.\n\nKeep in mind that commanding and growing financial freedom is what wealthy people do. It requires you to learn, grow, implement, and succeed. If you would like to know more about how to command and grow your wealth, I’d like to offer you a gift. Go to: https://bit.ly/SmartWealthHandbook  for your complimentary Smart Start Wealth Handbook. It will help you get your Smart Start.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "parent_permlink": "economics",
      "author": "smartgroup",
      "permlink": "is-our-economy-sleepwalking-with-no-plan-b",
      "title": "Is Our Economy Sleepwalking With No Plan “B”?",
      "body": "![sleepwalker-3499602_1920.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcMnxBJyESxkbvk3LuzTNryEuGhDB1QDUH9UCvNvdwp7n/sleepwalker-3499602_1920.jpg)\n\nSleepwalking usually involves more than just walking while asleep. It’s much more complicated than that because there’s a series of complex behaviors that are carried out while sleeping. The most obvious of which is walking. However, there’s a whole host of things that can happen when you are sleepwalking such as:\n\n· Sleep talking, when you don’t know what you are saying\n· You have little or no memory of the sleepwalking event\n· You can have inappropriate behavior such as urinating in a plant or close\n· Screaming loudly without waking up\n· Even violent attacks on the person trying to wake up the sleepwalker\n\nRight now, our economy is sleepwalking on the razor’s edge with no plan “B” because most of us are sleepwalking and have little or no memory of what happened in 2008, we believe things are going well. Yet, here we are sleepwalking again. The very thin blurred line between an imaginary red-hot economy and complete collapse are merging and no one knows how it’ll play out because the Federal Reserve doesn’t really have a strategy. It’s wandering aimlessly in the desert wondering when it can raise interest rates without the inevitable market collapse.\n\nAt first glance it appears as though our financial world is okay. We saw increases in stock prices because of a great job market report. Last month’s job report was outstanding. What’s interesting about our current job report is that we are already beyond full employment.\n\nThey told us that this amazing job report was evidence of a robust economy, but is that true?  In the 2008 crisis some 16 million workers fell off the books of unemployment because they just couldn’t find any work. Are they now being put back into this job’s market report? Is this why the expansion is happening? How many of these new jobs are being created for the human worker versus the robotic or AI worker? For some reason we have this belief that we are in a “Red-hot economy”. However, the worker isn’t feeling optimistic and with good reason.\n\nRight now the stock market does not represent the real working economy in a holistic sense. If you remember we had huge amounts of quantitative easing in order to prop up the stock market. Right now it’s as though we’re walking in our sleep and don’t remember that we have trillions of dollars in toxic assets that need to be sold back into our red-hot economy. When the FED started selling these toxic debts back into the market, the market instantly became sick and crashed.\n\nWe don’t have a plan B and we simply have created new bubbles of toxic debt. I believe our stock market reflects the strength of a company’s future cash flow, but it doesn’t represent the health of our economy. This short-term view that our economy is strong, while we still have toxic debts that need to be cleared off the books for the Federal Reserve, means that we are still working in a rice paper thin economy that could collapse at any second.\n\n![time-3613618_1920.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmaeWSZNUtAKAV4fQkKZCvckGzQwsQXvHwxB3xqea3DgZZ/time-3613618_1920.jpg)\n\nYou will benefit most by taking a step back from this daily uncertainty and volatility and think about the whole picture with discernment.  Making critical decisions about long-term stability means that you must evaluate the long-term as well as the short-term gain.\n\nLet me explain…\n\nIf we have $22 trillion dollars of governmental debt that needs to be paid back as well as:\n\n· Student debt\n· Personal debt\n· Car loans\n· Mortgages\n· HELOC’S\n\nWhile wages are rising in small amounts, do you think this creates a stable red-hot economy just because a job’s report is favorable?\n\nIs it a red-hot economy when you are running $1 trillion dollar deficit or more per year?\n\nIs it a red-hot economy if corporate debt is at a record $15 trillion dollars on the books as of this writing?\n\nIs it a red-hot economy if consumers own $4 trillion dollars of personal debt not including mortgages?\n\nWe are walking a very thin line between economic collapse, extreme personal debt, toxic debt being held by the Federal Reserve, and no plan B. It may be time to take matters into your own hands. You will benefit most by creating your plan B now. Now is a good time to begin bootstrapping a business or a side hustle that provides you with another source of income. You can discover 6 lucrative ideas to make money on the side by clicking here.\n\nOf course, it’s always wise to pay down your debt as much as you possibly can. However, learning how to live within your means needs to be practiced right now. Most people are addicted to debt because it is convenient. The pleasure of an instant gratification purchase leaves many people acquiring more personal debt. You will benefit most when you break this toxic habit now.\n\nHave some hard assets like metals and cash. If you remember the 2008 crash, you will also remember that everything went on sale. Even vehicles! For the first time in history you could buy one and get one free. You want to have cash saved up for when things go on sale so that you can take advantage by making purchases that will benefit your asset base.\n\nWe also benefit by having discernment. Even though a good economic report always feels uplifting and positive we benefit when we ask ourselves, “Did the actual problem get solved?” We are a decade into this economic sleepwalking. Most people don’t have a memory of what happened. We have not solved our debt issues, and running a deficit is the issue. Until that is solved, you will benefit most by protecting your own financial well-being.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "title": "Making Choices That Benefit You",
      "body": "![making choices.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYJXzXvAZcgc6om6tnYMi7zwGg4oNnDuXQ5qP5fVY7xnh/making%20choices.jpg)\n\nEveryone arrives at a defining moment in their life. Usually, more than once. Sometimes these moments are full of joy and sometimes they are full of pain. A defining moment is a very important point in your life because it is the matrix by which your life will materialize. Meaning, maybe you married someone when you really weren’t in love with that person and had three children. The defining moment was when you chose to marry them, knowing you weren’t in love with them.\n\nOr maybe you were offered a hand in marriage and knew you weren’t in love with them and lovingly declined the offer. These two scenarios are defining moments in action. They are going to determine your happiness over time. It is these moments that make up our quality of life or lack thereof.\n\nIt is how we make these decisions that is the most important part of making choices that benefit you.  Maybe you married that person because you felt safe or you knew they would make a good parent. Maybe they were wealthy and you felt like they would be a good provider for your family. Whatever the reason you made this decision, the measure of your happiness is going to be the key to making choices that benefit you.\n\nThere’s one last defining moment that happens to a person. I call it Divine discontent. This is when someone grows out of or beyond their current circumstances. For example, it’s when a child grows out of playing with dolls and simply wishes to do something else. When you have decided that you’ve outgrown something, we often feel restless inside. We are looking for that next level of consciousness that will benefit our well-being. When we get to these places, we want to make choices that are going to benefit us.\n\nI want to share with you three ways that I make choices in order to benefit my highest and best good.\n\n1. Ask yourself questions that help you discern: When I feel restlessness, I ask myself, “What is it that I’m Restless about?” Do I need to shift everything in my life or do I just need an adventure in my life? When I get a feeling of, “Is this all there is?” I know that I need something new in my life. It doesn’t necessarily mean I need to blow up my life in order to have my new experience. This is so important because I know many people have blown up their life simply because they had a feeling of wanderlust, and, have regretted it ever since.\n\n2. Remember to choose you: Sometimes we rush into things without thinking about how they’re going to affect our lives long term, especially relationships. When you fall in love, it’s good to take your time and let it unfold versus trying to rush into what you think it should be. If someone is trying to force you to hurry up beyond the speed that you would like the relationship to unfold, I would throw up a red flag. Things have their own timing and we often like to push through that timing without allowing it to unfold.  We suddenly want to control the outcome versus experience the outcome. When choosing you, it means checking in and asking yourself if this is truly what you want. If you’re feeling respected or honored, are you respecting and honoring them and yourself? You can’t rush love because love just is. When you allow things to unfold, you allow the magic of the universe to show up as well.  Choosing you is an art, because we often sacrifice ourselves, thinking that it’s for the greater good. When the truth is, it’s simply somebody else’s agenda. For example, when you work those extra hours at your job even though you don’t want to, thinking it’s for the greater good, it’s really for somebody else’s bottom line. One of the hardest choices you can make is to sacrifice yourself and not Choose You. Making choices that benefit you means saying “No” when it is in your best interest.\n\n3. Visualize your best life: Many people don’t pay attention to their dreams, not even their daydreams. When you have moments of dreaming, notice what you’re dreaming about. Inside your day dreams are longings. These inner longings will tell you about things that are currently important to you.\n\nThey are road maps to things you would like to experience. When you have an idea of the dream life you would like to build, then intentionally visualize that becoming your life. Begin to make a plan to build it. Part of choosing you is allowing yourself, and your dreams to be validated. That means acknowledging what it is that you want. There is a lot of truth in the phrase, “Dare to dream.”\n\nAllowing yourself to grow into what it is that you want to do and be takes courage. It is a bold move towards your new life. Making choices that benefit you means taking small steps every day, that lead to big wins.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "parent_permlink": "lifelessons",
      "author": "smartgroup",
      "permlink": "our-epidemic-of-relying-on-faux-trophy-assets",
      "title": "Our Epidemic Of Relying On Faux Trophy Assets",
      "body": "![Faux Trophy.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTsR76FLPgzLAdq6J4BcFUBxjh4P5pUHhcft9etPNaw6S/Faux%20Trophy.jpg)\n\nI’ve been fascinated by how prevalent our idea of happiness surrounds the concept that in order to appear successful in life, you must have a certain set of practical pursuits. Things such as:\n\n1. You should get good grades\n2. You should go to this Ivy League school\n3. You should get a degree in engineering, medicine, or computer science\n4. You should live in this state, in this city\n5. You should take this kind of job and then climb this corporate ladder\n6. You should purchase this kind of home, in this kind of neighborhood\n\nWhen we arrive at these milestones we often find ourselves being rewarded with some token of success; a diploma, a scholarship, a degree, a promotion, a raise, a good credit score. These are our faux trophy assets that are supposed to show our level of success and reflect our happiness in life, but instead they are nothing more than participation awards.\n\nThey are sold to us as building blocks to having a happy life. But they are faux building blocks. It’s not pursuing authentic or real happiness. Instead, they are the pleather of happiness. It’s not real happiness, it’s synthetic happiness.\n\nIt simply has the appearance of happiness. Underneath that pleather of happiness is insurmountable unhappiness, debt, stress, and unhealthy responsibility to someone else’s agenda and life they want you to live.\n\nWe continue living and relying on our faux success by entering the “Keeping up with the Jones’s” lifestyle. This is done by purchasing other faux trophy assets. We qualify for more debt and purchase houses and cars we can’t afford. We go on vacations using credit cards.\n\nWe buy trinkets of success and other things that give us the appearance of having a happy life. We parade around with our $1000 purse, appearing and feeling successful, when we don’t have a $1000 to put in that purse.\n\nAll the while underneath the facade is a person screaming, “Notice me! Look at me! I’m important! I’m somebody!”\n\nLiving this way isn’t working. If you take a deeper look underneath the facade, you’ll hear the real person saying, “This isn’t me.” A lot has gone wrong with the pursuit of faux trophy assets, in a world that is shifting into passion and creativity this kind of “practicality” doesn’t work.\n\nWhen you are pursuing someone else’s dreams of happiness for you, you aren’t living your dreams or finding your happiness.  When you settle for a job or a life you have no passion for, you end up with a life of mediocrity that you have participation awards for. Living this way is an epidemic in this world. It’s dangerous to democracy and it allows tyranny to continue. Let me explain…\n\nWhen you’re willing to live in this kind of compromise, you not only give away the authentic opportunity you have to live an extraordinary life, but you give away subtle things as well, things like health, quality of life, and the pursuit of real happiness.\n\nYou grow more unhealthy responsibility and that puts unnecessary stress on you. You grow a sense or feeling of helplessness and stuckness. You become addicted to living in this vicious cycle and it robs you of your future.\n\nWhen we live a life of relying on faux trophy assets, we are trained to become a follower. Following the rules of success as though they are outlined in predictable steps, as if we were robots doesn’t work.\n\nWe don’t actually have to think for ourselves. We don’t question or use discernment. We don’t have to ask ourselves what we want. We simply follow a prescribed path or set of directions that are supposed to be beneficial to our well-being.\n\nWhen you live like this, you die without knowing who you actually are and what you actually want. This is living as “The Walking Dead”.  Happiness is something we pursue. It allows us to dream, visualize and ask ourselves what we want to pursue. Breaking the cycle of inauthentic living means that you will benefit most by creating a smart life.\n\nWhen you create a smart life, you understand the difference between following the rules and knowing when to break the rules. It’s knowing how to bridge yourself from where you are now to where you actually want to be. It’s getting to know you in a deep way. It gives you the ability to evaluate what it is that you actually want, where you want to live, what’s important to you, and what success looks like for you.\n\nTo live a smart life means not engaging in unhealthy responsibilities that have nothing to do with you. It’s moving away from a life where you feel stuck and hopeless and moving into a life that ignites the best parts of you and helps you enjoy the journey.\n\nThe danger in relying on faux trophy assets and blindly accepting what other people tell you, is that you are forced to accept some preconceived or preordained level of happiness, which is living a life of consistent rules and struggles that don’t benefit your dreams.\n\nFor me, I remember the feeling I got when I received a participation award, not realizing it was a faux trophy. It gave me a false sense of self-esteem. I started pursuing other people’s agendas because the pat on the back felt so good. What I realized from experiencing this was that my self-esteem wasn’t as great as I thought it was.\n\nMy transformation came when I realized that my authentic self-esteem would help me unfold my happiness. When you have genuine, authentic self-esteem, it’s because you’ve gotten to know you in a way that you respect. You value you more than all those faux trophy assets you’ve been collecting all your life.\n\nSuccess isn’t a place you go to. It’s not somewhere you arrive at. It’s a state of being you live by, that surrounds what’s important to you and living the life of your dreams. The truth is, your life and success get real, when you get real.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "title": "The Smart Way To Start A Business With Your Spouse",
      "body": "![Biz with Spouse.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYM2BW7jwxipfv8iJSqeEwNYjStJxhYxaYpvRGCEayqjy/Biz%20with%20Spouse.jpg)\n\nLearning how to start a business with your spouse happens over time, not overnight. You both may be excited about an idea, however, if you are considering starting a company with your spouse or if you already have a business together make sure you prepare by having the tough conversations and creating a check list of priorities that will help you avoid potential issues.\n\nMost people don’t understand that starting a business with their spouse is the riskiest thing they can do.  For example, if you and I put $10,000 into a business and it fails we’re only out $10,000. When a married couple starts a business, they risk 100% of everything. They risk their marriage, their credit rating, 100% of their savings, and their home. Truth be told, couple-run businesses take on the biggest risk. That means planning is different for them.\n\nYou must update your plans consistently as the business grows in order to make sure that both the marriage and the business are thriving.\n\nHere are 3 things to make sure you cover:\n\n1) Have your financial plan in order first: Because the risks are higher for couple entrepreneurs, it will be important to have your financial safeguards in place. Do you have life insurance? Do you have an emergency fund with at least $2000 saved in it? Do you have money saved up in order to start the business? Money issues are still the leading cause of divorce. Having these things in place will help you lower the emotional stress that can happen when finances are too tight for one partner.\n\n2) Don’t start a business together if both of you are not completely on board with the idea: If one of you hates the type of business you both opened, then you will be unhappy long term, and this is not fun to work in. Don’t start a business just because you know how to do it. Pick something you both may enjoy and embrace the learning curve of that business. Choose your roles and develop together, over time.\n\n3) Avoid burnout: Some couples attempt to do everything they can by themselves. They want to save a buck and often end up doing the work of four people. This is not healthy and should be avoided when possible. Learn to outsource and delegate as soon as you can. This will help you avoid burnout.\n\nRespecting each other is an important part of having a couple-run business.  That means that your spouse isn’t “the free help”. You pay your spouse a salary just like you would like to receive. Too often women end up working for a business for free or for very little. This is a partnership and must be treated just like other partnerships are treated. Both partners reap the rewards of a business with a fair and equal salary.\n\nIf your spouse is feeling disrespected, overtime that will jeopardize your marriage. This means speaking kindly to each other and learning to have dignity at work versus power struggle. You will benefit most by acquiring a good coach or therapist from the start. Make sure when there’s down time that you are not talking about what the business needs or wants. Play time is play time.\n\nStarting a business with your spouse can be one of the most rewarding things you ever do. There will be challenges and successes, as well as celebrations and disappointments. In the end, it will bring you closer together if you have created a solid plan and vision.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "body": "Congratulations @smartgroup! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :\n\n<table><tr><td>https://steemitimages.com/60x70/http://steemitboard.com/@smartgroup/posts.png?201902111738</td><td>You published more than 40 posts. Your next target is to reach 50 posts.</td></tr>\n</table>\n\n<sub>_[Click here to view your Board](https://steemitboard.com/@smartgroup)_</sub>\n<sub>_If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word_ `STOP`</sub>\n\n\nTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!\n\n\n> Support [SteemitBoard's project](https://steemit.com/@steemitboard)! **[Vote for its witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1)** and **get one more award**!",
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      "body": "![Megatrends.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXPHrmfL6ZcKebd7zbHimvcbMSEWaA82Ys1aguECCjf1w/Megatrends.jpg)\n\nWhat trends are defining our future? How will they define your company’s future? What impact will they have on business, society and culture? How can you make sense of a world in motion that is often moving faster than you are?\n\nAt Smart Group Firm we define a megatrend as a new global development or product that impacts individuals, societies, businesses and economics. It has a complete transformative force and can also be destructive in how it enters a market. How it impacts you and your business is dependent on whether you can embrace the change or let it disrupt your business.\n\nFor example, technology has had both the power to advance or destroy a business and this is a megatrend. It has affected all of humanity in both a positive or negative way. Embracing our digital future will help your business if you look at the enormous opportunities that exist for entrepreneurs.\n\nEntrepreneurship is still a megatrend that is happening as we look at the decline of jobs and the emergence of robotics, AI and the small business owner.  Small business growth in countries that did not have access to the internet is now booming. Entrepreneurship is also evolving as we look at the amount of women business owners growing. Their new business mindset and ecosystems play an important role in this megatrend and its future outcomes.\n\nA global market place fully connected in real time is a megatrend that has been one of the most favorable keys to the fast growth of any business and the death of poverty. It will continue to create talent shortages as companies look for ways to secure competitive advantages. The world economy will continue growing in the direction of interdependent trade and for your business to grow, you will have to embrace this megatrend.\n\nBlockchain is the new kid on the block that will be disrupting and creating new systems of wealth.  It will make things more secure and transparent as it continues to help systems become more specific. For example, Walmart is using blockchain to inventory what farms produce is coming from so that if there is a foodborne illness they can identify it faster without having to throw out food that is clean and available for market.\n\nThese trends are shifting business faster than anything else in history ever has. However, they are also shifting how business is done and the way business is done. It is a more diverse environment and there is a new learning curve to interacting in this environment.\n\nWill your business embrace or be disrupted by these trends? You will benefit most when you analyze your business and look for opportunities you may not have noticed. Are you leaving money on the table and don’t know it?",
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      "permlink": "stop-wasting-my-time-the-benefits-of-relationship-marketing",
      "title": "Stop Wasting My Time! The Benefits Of Relationship Marketing",
      "body": "![stop wasting time.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQn1sENw5UwQKRoTiTAbwqdct9Dq8HNNqhi4i6YHfKF6y/stop%20wasting%20time.jpg)\n\nI don’t know about you, but as a CEO running and growing a business, I create at least four strong pieces of content per day. I work with clients, and I have a team of people who depend on me. Most of my time is committed and extremely valuable. Is it the same for you? When I meet clients and work with them, they have paid me at least $997 for the hour. So, when I give a free hour to someone, it is precious time. I could be doing many other things such as:\n\n-Spending more time with my family\n- Speaking to a new client\n- Consulting a current client\n- Writing an article for my online community\n- Creating a video for my YouTube Channel\n- Putting together a PowerPoint presentation\n\nSerious business owners don’t have a free hour to throw away, especially on a FREE strategy session or webinar when it is really a code word for sales pitch. Yesterday a ‘Business Coach’ pitched me on LinkedIn and invited me to have a free ‘Strategy Session’ (basically an hour-long sales call).\n\nMany of us have experienced that, haven’t we? This person was pushy and super insistent. They promised me it would be “the most valuable time I’d ever spent on my business’’ and they were sure they could “help me.’’ This sales tactic has been VERY popular as of late. It is being used by a lot of inexperienced people who barely have a web page, let alone actual long-term clientele. This is hustling and grinding as business building.\n\nPlease, stop wasting my time on your free webinar, masterclass or strategy session when you offer no real value in your value ladder. Are you hoping I spend at least four figures from watching your marginal webinar and then hope I jump into your community without thinking?\n\nIf you are, then delivery of your service is not worth my four figures. Let me be clear on this… I have paid well into the five figures for services that deliver on their promises and care about my success on a business and personal level.\n\nDon’t attempt to take me through your value ladder when you know ZERO about my business or about me. I’m unwilling to pay $20k or more for someone who underestimates me and offers marginal guidance as a consultant. Most coaches and consultants want big money without doing what they are asking their clients to do.\n\nSome coaches that have pitched me didn’t know that I had already built 11 successful businesses or had written 23 books. They didn’t know how many people I had on staff or what our web page was. This isn’t the first time this has happened. To me this is you wanting me to buy your fictional credibility.\n\nI’ve been pitched by coaches and consultants who want me to hire them, who haven’t made as much money as I have. They are hustling for their bread and butter. I had one such consultant who met me at an event and overheard from someone else how much money my company had made that year, literally stalk me on the internet for about 6 months, hoping I would hire him. Even though he confessed to me he had lost his business, was going through a divorce, and felt down and depressed, he still wanted me to hire him. I’m calling this out right now for how bad it is…\n\nThere are a few things I look at when hiring someone to work with:\n\n1. I won’t work with you if you use FOMO or ‘high scarcity’ closing tactics\n\n2. If you have researched me and my business and know about my industry\n\n3. If you have a real community of people that enjoy working with you and with each other\n\n4. The quality of the work presented to me\n\nIf you are hoping to pitch me your strategy session, whether 15 mins or one hour, please don’t waste my time with a marginal solution that really only benefits you. These cheap tactics don’t work with me. I built my businesses before social media was born and I value long-term relationships in business.\n\nRelationship marketing and networking may be “old school” but they are stronger than quick fix tactics used today because they last.  My average client stays with me five and a half years. I don’t hustle for a living. I connect for a living and there is a big difference. I also don’t pay huge Facebook costs.\n\nWhat’s important to know is that I can tell when someone simply wants my money. I value authenticity and I can hear authentic concern vs. someone who is actively listening. I know the difference between someone who doesn’t want to bother building a relationship, it is obvious from their contrived message that they are just trying to close me and those people who deeply care about the success of their clients and understand that they need success stories in order to win.\n\nThere are a boat load of GREAT coaches and consultants that are thriving because they understand the power of having a relationship with their client and aren’t simply trying to make a buck selling their products in a “Scarcity” kind of way. These sales tactics don’t work long term. Building a relationship with your client means working harder than simply buying a Facebook ad, that leads to your webinar, that leads to your sales funnel so you can cash in and look like a hero.\n\nIf you want to have a business long term, you will benefit most by looking at your client-care system long term. There are so many benefits to using relationship marketing to grow your business and stabilize it, that it is worth the effort to go the extra mile now. Relationship marketing doesn’t use high pressure closing and sales tactics. We are moving into the relationship and community marketing models which allow for the benefits of:\n\n· Subscribers\n· Fans\n· Collaborators\n· Networks\n· Communities\n· Tribes\n· Audience\n\nIn 2008 Wired Magazine’s Executive Editor, Kevin Kelly, wrote an article called “1,000 True Fans.” In that article he said, “A creator such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, video maker, or author, in other words, anyone producing works of art… needs to acquire only a thousand true fans to make a living. A true fan is designed as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce.\n\n![concert-768722_1920.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcbFHK6MTKJfUr3E2Xy1j96sFEn5h5LYEm9jwf7F98Ujn/concert-768722_1920.jpg)\n\nThey will drive 200 miles to see you sing, they will buy the Super Deluxe reissued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google alert set for your name, they bookmark your eBay page when your out of print edition shows up. They are true fans.”\n\nIt’s commonly accepted as the most critical piece of advice for anyone looking to start their business. Kevin Kelly says, “Whatever your interests as a creator are, your 1,000 true fans are one click from you. As far as I can tell there is nothing — no product, no idea, no desire — without a fan base on the internet. Everything made or thought of can interest at least one person in a million. The trick is to practically find those fans, or, more accurately, to have them find you.”\n\nThe difference is where you put your attention and focus. If you want to build a business long term, then your attention and focus must be on gathering a thousand fans, and not a thousand sales.  When you focus on sales, you lose the long-term stability and scalability of your business, although it looks as if you are successful because you have sales. Russell Brunson, in his fantastic book, “Expert Secrets” said, “Each of us must focus on building our own cultures, creating true fans.” You will benefit most when you learn how to create true fans versus a simple product sale.\n\nThis is where the work begins. You have to put some time into thinking about what you were going to create in the first place to get a thousand true fans. You will benefit most by thinking about your business as a community builder. Meaning, in your business, how can you add an element of community? Where can you build your tribe or audience? What benefits are there to being a community member? What new opportunity can you provide them? How can you help them feel better about themselves by working with you?\n\nTaylor Swift uses her hugely popular social networks, (she has over a 140 million fans), to form relationships with them. She has made this an active part of her business model. She blogs and puts up posts for them to read, makes playlists, leaves comments for them, and is in constant connection with her fans, even going so far as to give them heartfelt relationship advice.\n\nTaylor spends a lot of her spare time interacting with hardcore fans. This is a great example of relationship marketing. She genuinely loves her fans. It’s not a publicity stunt. She sends Christmas presents to fans with handwritten letters. This is going the extra mile and why she’s such a celebrated artist.\n\nTaylor Swift doesn’t see her fans as product buyers, but as a relationship that will carry her business long-term and scale out her message and music to more people. Today, we are seeing the power of celebrity begin to fall and the power of the influencer rising. It only makes sense to begin seeing the person you’re selling to as the relationship that will fire up your business long term.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "permlink": "make-your-book-the-carrot-of-your-sales-and-marketing",
      "title": "Make Your Book The Carrot Of Your Sales & Marketing",
      "body": "![Make Your Book.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmWETjdcMJ9XggUksxqCcUi7hTyRxWWA7Wuc79tRQpgCAe/Make%20Your%20Book.jpg)\n\nEveryone is talking about tech trends and how that grows business and sales quickly and while that is partially true, it’s not the whole truth. When it comes to sales and marketing nothing says “influence and expertise” like being a published author does. If you’re a bestselling author, this is even better because it helps you stand out.\n\nIt’s a way of dangling a carrot in front of your customer and leading them to you based on your expertise and not your ability to hustle a sale. It says, “Get it from the one who wrote the book on that topic.” Writing a book separates you from your competition in 3 distinct ways.\n\n1) It makes you a thought leader in your industry. It gives you the opportunity to tell the world why you understand the industry, the need, and the solution better than anyone else in your industry does. When you have a book, you have something your competitor doesn’t have that makes you more credible to customers.\n\n2) It gives you industry command and leadership. You are essentially taking a stand in your industry when you write a book. It’s a bold move and helps you stand out because once a book is published, you can’t take it back and say, “Oh I didn’t mean that.” Your platform is out there for everyone. You have just “Manned up” when your book is out in the world. It tells your competitor you are the leader in your industry and not a follower.\n\n3) It becomes your sales and marketing tool. When you are on vacation, attending a family event, sleeping or watching football, your sales and marketing tool is out there in the world pitching for you. It is closing the sale at the networking event, at a conference, at a business meeting, or at a book store. It is speaking for you and winning that contract. It is creating opportunities for you.\n\nThe power of becoming a published author is so important to your sales and marketing mix and yet so many business owners undervalue it. Not because it isn’t important, but because they feel overwhelmed at the idea of writing a book. Most people understand the power of adding the word “author” to their title, but few step up and complete the work it takes to create a book. This mistake means that you are leaving opportunity and prosperity on the table for others to take.\n\nThe other mistake new authors make is that many people try to short cut their expertise by outsourcing the task of writing a book to a freelancer. I know that a million books a year get published on Amazon by shoddy eBook writers who are all sales pitch and no real content inside their book. They have a freelancer write it and then put them up for sale. This is a dangerous mistake because books are reviewed and rated by the purchaser.\n\nHowever, the power of publishing a good book will bring you outstanding opportunities. When done correctly, it will bring you more prosperity because you will be more sought after.\n\nAlso, don’t down play being an Amazon best seller. It is the largest book store in the world and it is the only global bookstore. There is a lot of competition. When you think about there being 1 million books released per year, being in the top 100 books in any genre is a great accomplishment. Also, more people shop for books on Amazon than any other book store. It is a powerful place to begin selling your book. The KDP platform is easy to use if you wish to be a self-published author.\n\nIf you are looking for a traditional publisher there are the big 5 publishers which are:\n\n1. Penguin Random House\n\n2. Wolters Kluwer\n\n3. HarperCollins\n\n4. Scholastic\n\n5. McGraw Hill\n\nHowever, the truth is traditional publishing is dying. There are new hybrid-publishing houses that are collaboration style publishers that support the author more than traditional publishing ever did. They have proven to have incredible results and support their authors in a stronger way.\n\nFor example: Morgan James Publishing is one of those hybrid publishing houses that supported the Business Phenom book by Russell Brunson, “Dot-Com Secrets”. It has sold over 182,000 copies and still has not hit the New York Times bestseller list. It is however, an Amazon bestseller and an USA Today bestseller.\n\nThe difference between traditional publishing and hybrid publishing is that the results are better with the hybrid publisher. You have to ask yourself, “What results do I want with my book?” Do you want more sales or just the New York Times best-selling book award?\n\nMost people would say they wanted more book sales. I know I would. I prefer the hybrid publishing model for many reasons. If you are a new author this is a wonderful venue when you work with the right publisher. You have to understand the publishing industry in order to help you make choices as to who you are working with.\n\nJust because you have a publisher that is one of the big 5, it does not mean they are interested in supporting your book. Most likely, they’re going to want you to support your book. When you add up all the possibilities of working with a traditional publisher you have to ask yourself the same question, “Do I want more sales or the Accolade of having a big publisher logo on my book?”\n\nYou have to know the difference between getting the job done, which means getting you to be a bestseller, and working with a publisher who can do that for you. I work with ThePublishingCircle.com because its CEO is also great at continued sales of a book. This company works with you to grow your sales over the long term.\n\nThe submissions process is simple. Everyone is treated with respect including first-time authors. The benefits of working in a hybrid publishing community, is new authors who may need endorsements for their book and introductions to radio shows and podcasters can get help.\n\nThere are many ways that you can benefit by becoming an author. When you understand what you want the goals of your book to be, you want to be working with someone who can help you achieve those goals.  You invest in your sales and marketing every year. It is Smart to invest in getting more influence and credibility by having a book. Maybe it is not as overwhelming as you think. There are other solutions out there other than traditional publishers that can support your book publishing efforts making it a little easier. Just remember a book is one of the best marketing tools around.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "permlink": "when-success-becomes-your-calling-and-purpose",
      "title": "When Success Becomes Your Calling And Purpose",
      "body": "![Success Your Calling.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmeMTMUWZwxsMdrkmaBCnuJaMwjL7XGCUCvyHNoggbkw3Y/Success%20Your%20Calling.jpg)\n\nI remember that defining moment in my life when I got tired of not achieving what I saw others achieve. Part of why I didn’t have what I wanted was because I had never stopped to ask myself what it was that I did want.\n\nInstead I stood there on the sidelines, like a spectator watching a football game wondering why I was watching the game instead of playing in it. I saw other people achieve great things and I cheered for them while secretly feeling like a loser that simply wasn’t good enough.\n\nSitting there I would ask myself, “How are they doing all these great things?” When I finally sat quietly to ask myself what it was that I did want, I became embarrassed about what I truly wanted. I was so embarrassed that the thought of chasing those dreams became unimportant.\n\nI didn’t want anyone to know that I secretly liked validation and recognition. Wanting those two things didn’t appear very enlightened or emotionally mature to me and I certainly did not want others to see me as unenlightened and emotionally immature.\n\nI thought it was egotistical and showed how poor my self-esteem actually was. I wanted to be liked and popular. Because I didn’t simply accept myself and value who I was in the moment, I couldn’t access or use the power of what I wanted and who I was to drive me forward.\n\nBecause I’m a woman I also thought it wasn’t very “lady like” to have this enormous competitive drive inside me that wanted to play the game and win. I didn’t just want to win, I wanted to be cock of the walk.\n\nAlso, I wanted people in my industry to look at me and see me as the person they would have to be as good as in order to be on top. I wanted the respect of my peers and to have a secret sauce for success that nobody else had. That secret sauce has given me the success I enjoy today, and it keeps growing year after year. I’m going to share my secret sauce with you today for the first time.\n\nThe truth is, I love to compete and win. I love people knowing I have a good work ethic and deliver excellent work. I love when my team, my spouse, and my partners are proud of me. As well as when my friends are proud to know me or to hang out with me. These good feelings drive me forward and deeper into success and suddenly I become unstoppable.\n\nThe desire to feel these good feelings were my training wheels that helped motivate me through hard feelings, learning curves, uncertainty, and obstacles. The want to have people be proud of me helped me push myself when I did not feel “good enough.”\n\nOver time, I noticed that my want to have people be proud of me was strengthening my success muscle. Suddenly, my success muscle had become so strong I no longer needed others to be proud of me. I still like it, but I no longer need it.\n\nOne day, out of the blue, I realized exactly what success meant to me. For me, success is the ability to out think, out motivate and out maneuver myself through my uncomfortable mindset into my unstoppable mindset, helping me take the necessary actions I must take to achieve my dreams and goals.\n\nWhen this happened to me, I moved from success being something I achieved to something that was a part of me. It became my purpose and calling. It did not mean I did not have hardships or obstacles. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t be upset and cry, feel defeated or be angry.\n\nIt meant that I knew how to maneuver and strategize my way out of those negative places more easily. I took stronger actions and this produced stronger results and an empowering feeling of success.\n\nWhen success becomes your purpose and calling, you are able to out think, out motivate, and out maneuver your self-defeating behaviors and take the necessary actions to get you back on track.\n\nHaving people watch you do this is what garners respect and influence in your industry. Steve Jobs demonstrated this for the whole world when the company he built and started (Apple) fired him and then rehired him to save the company he started, from going belly up. Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”\n\nWhen success becomes a calling and purpose you develop authentic influence in your industry because you have the courage to continue through whatever obstacle.\n\nNow here is the big secret sauce to all this success talk. The secret to success is accepting that you like and need positive support. Nobody likes to be seen with their training wheels on, but it is an important part of growing into the success process. If you can get over yourself and accept that you like what you like, then you can put some powerful training wheels on.\n\nIt may mean that you need to accept that you actually want to be somebody and do something great. It may mean that you accept that you don’t want to be average and ordinary. It may mean that you want others to look at you and see you as wonderful, the best, or exceptional at what you do.\n\nThe desire to experience these feelings means there is something great, exceptional and important on the inside of you that wants out. You can unearth your greatness and then help others unearth their greatness. This is what will help to build a successful world.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "permlink": "how-to-make-and-close-mutually-beneficial-deals",
      "title": "How To Make And Close Mutually Beneficial Deals",
      "body": "![Make and Close Deals.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmP83ri3xGe5egYntnpfGRyQSyYYnsoPPd9U5RBkUzhjGZ/Make%20and%20Close%20Deals.jpg)\n\nMaking and closing deals are the bread and butter of your business. However, there is nothing worse than having to clean up after you have made a bad deal that falls apart. Most of the time this could be avoided if we understood how to make mutually beneficial deals, but most people don’t understand how to do that.\n\nMaybe you bid too low on a project or a partnership goes south and there are bad feelings. Either way there are ways that you can evaluate what went wrong in order to avoid making that mistake again. However, there is not a lot of information on creating mutually beneficial outcomes.\n\nIf you want to be smart about growing your business then having strong, healthy deals will be an important aspect of growing a stable business. Working with people you enjoy and learning the art of benefiting everyone helps bring opportunities to your business.\n\nHere are 3 tips to help ensure you are closing healthy deals:\n\n1) Stop trying to hit sales quotas and build relationships: Work to grow your business. If you are building a book of business and need to hit sales quotas, then you are not building long-term relationships with your clients. Instead you will be churning customers.  John, a top car salesman in Colorado, has built relationships that provide him with clients, not customers. He builds long-term relationships with clients and they provide him with new clients that buy from him all the time. He is my whole family’s car salesman. He is trusted and I will continue providing him with opportunities to sell cars to my friends.  This is how you build a stable long-term business. When you hustle to fill sales quotas, you are working someone else’s agenda, not building a book of business that builds wealth long term.\n\n2) Create partnerships that are mutually beneficial: This means learning about what is beneficial for each of the partners involved. Maybe profit splits are important to you and maybe time freedom is more important to your partner. When you provide a healthy deal for yourself and your partners, your outcomes are healthy, stronger, and this stabilizes your business quickly. It supports creativity and a healthy culture at your place of business. It makes you popular to joint venture with, thus growing your business long term.\n\n3) Trust your gut and be willing to say “No”: If your gut says don’t do the deal, and your head is saying, “But we need the money,” you are fooling yourself. Most people who have ignored their intuition and have not followed their gut, (including myself) have regretted it. When you can say no, it puts you in a better position to negotiate or be open for a better client or deal.\n\nDon’t grow an unhealthy business simply because you want to see fast results. Grow a stable business because you are clear about having healthy business dealings. Follow these three tips and you will have long-term success.",
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      "permlink": "how-to-not-let-your-past-prevent-you-from-success",
      "title": "How To Not Let Your Past Prevent You From Success",
      "body": "![Belittle.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmeyrWhc616C9TqHnnddr7QYkU985Q74pSk59h9k3Y9MD3/Belittle.jpg)\n\nI think behind every great success I’ve had, there has been an equally and greater wound or trauma behind it pushing me forward. Sometimes success isn’t about wanting to be great, but wanting to cover something up, and hide something by appearing great. I had a lot shame in my life. Many of my adult authority figures hated me. They were abusive, cruel, and unkind. Somehow in my journey to win their love, I thought success was a great work around to counter the activity of being belittled and dismissed as a nothing.\n\nGary Vaynerchuk once said he actually won the lottery with his birth. He talked about how his mother saw his true inner gifts. Despite the world seeing him as not doing well in school, and even though he didn’t do well and was dyslexic, his mother saw his gifts. She gave him authentic self-esteem because she encouraged him and helped him grow.\n\nHe stated authentic self-esteem is winning the lottery for a human birth. The real thing we hope parents do for us is to help us embrace our self-worth in order to provide us with authentic success. However, this doesn’t happen to a lot of us and many of us find workarounds that we think will help us.\n\nThe truth is, there is authentic and inauthentic success.  For me, success was a way of hiding the shame I felt about being who I am. I saw being successful as a way to overcome my shortcomings of being human. In fact, according to parental authorities my shortcomings were so great, that I probably didn’t deserve to live. I wasn’t worthy of love. I wasn’t worthy of being respected or successful.\n\nSince I didn’t win the lottery of great parenting, I used success as a way to try and win them back. As a young adult I kept thinking, “If I am great, surely they will notice me and be proud.” Instead, I was dismissed and belittled into success. They kept not noticing and dismissing my wins as luck. So, I kept trying harder and harder to win over people and parents.\n\nI couldn’t figure out how to help them overcome their hatred of me, so I just worked harder. In order to win them over, I chose to be great at everything I did. For example, in my youth when there were two team captains and we were going to play a game of baseball.\n\nThere were only two girls in the lineup. The boys would choose boys first, one player at a time, and then only the girls were left. Then one of the team captains would say, “She’s a girl, but she’s the best girl in the bunch, so I will take her.”\n\nThis policy, I thought would help me become more successful in life. I heard them say it over and over again. “Pick Vickie! She’s a girl, but she’s the best girl in the bunch, pick her.” This was how I was going to win over the world. Eventually, my parents would “pick Vickie”, because she was the best, most successful girl in the bunch. It all seemed so logical at the time.\n\nBut it never worked. It wasn’t that I was a girl. It was that I was a homosexual girl and during my era, being gay/lesbian was significantly hated, made fun of, and judged. You could get fired from your job, not be able to get an apartment, and not even be able to get other services. Some of that still goes on today.\n\nEvidently, there are places that don’t want you to order services from them if you’re gay. For some reason, it’s a big thing around wedding cakes. If they know you are gay, they will deny you services. Religions make you sound so bad, you should burn in hell forever for being gay. If your friends find out, you will be immediately dismissed and suddenly gossiped about.\n\nIt was embarrassing for my family All they could see was that I was gay. At times, all people can see is what they perceive as another’s shortcomings.\n\nThis still goes on today, things like:\n\n· All they can see is that your Muslim\n\n· All they can see is that your black\n\n· All they can see is that you’re an immigrant\n\n· All they can see is that you’re gay\n\n· All they can see is that you’re wealthy\n\n· All they can see is that you’re poor\n\n· All they can see is that you’re homeless\n\n· All they can see is your mistakes\n\n· All they can see is that you’re privileged\n\n· All they can see is that you’re not black enough or white enough\n\n· All they can see is that you’re fat\n\n· All they can see is that you’re an addict\n\nThe truth is, we live in a world that vilifies people based on false stories that help other people feel a false sense of self-esteem or in order to create an excuse.  We focus on what’s wrong with someone and point it out in order to feel better about ourselves. Could you imagine what success the world could achieve if we stopped the habit of seeing only perceived shortcomings?\n\nAt the time, my workaround for living in all this hate was to be the best at whatever I was doing. So, even though I heard conversations from people that said, “Yes, I know she’s a lesbian but she’s the best (fill in the blank) we have,” and they would pick me.\n\nThere are privileges with being the best at something and during that era that helped me bypass their hatred. However, that does not create authenticity. That’s when I realized my life shouldn’t be a workaround for other people’s religious beliefs, fears, and hatred.\n\nThings have gotten better over time, but it’s still not great. It wasn’t until the moment of writing this that I could share how my success became inauthentic. I have wasted my life hoping to get people who are unwilling to change, to change their mind about me, and I don’t want others to suffer that fate. Your personal leadership skills require that you value you and understand your true worth. If the divine gave you a birth into human form, you can be sure that you are worthy to be here.\n\nSuccess is how we learn to access the best of ourselves and transform into the best we can be in each moment. The truth is, being loved for your success is not a lasting form of love.\n\nTherefore, many people fail at their goals and don’t achieve anything, because they are not actually trying to achieve the goal. They are trying to achieve more likeability and acceptability by achieving goals. The one thing I’ve learned over this journey is that success is personal. It’s defined by you and it’s achieved by you.\n\nMeaning, once I took the ugly mask of winning inauthentic respect and love away and wore my shame on my sleeve for everyone to see, I began the journey of achieving success. I suddenly realized I had the skill sets to achieve whatever success I wanted. Success skills are universal. They can be applied to anything. Once they are yours, you have them with you forever.\n\nI still have some weak spots in me though. This means I don’t like to be dismissed or judged because of who I am, and I don’t like being blamed for something I didn’t do. I can become very defensive when this happens because I still feel vulnerable. Because of this, I often choose to remain quiet about my being gay. I am protective of me. I still feel the pain inside of being dismissed or being judged by other people without them knowing who I am.\n\nI think that’s a disease on the planet. We judge race and religion, orientation, ethnicity of every kind without ever finding out if the person in front of us is a successfully, kind, human being. For some reason I believe when we judge another person it falsely makes us feel better about who we are. We may say to ourselves, “I may be lacking, but I’m not______ (whatever you’re judging.)”\n\nHere’s a little success secret I learned: People who derive a false sense of self-esteem by only noticing shortcomings, have self-esteem issues that are bigger then the shortcoming they see in another. It’s so big and terrifying to them that they’re unwilling to look at it. The way they avoid looking at it is to belittle another. It takes the focus and attention off the shortcoming that they are avoiding.\n\nFor anyone, true success means that you must be willing to release any present and past shame to transform into your inner human nobility.  The quality of being noble is goodness and honoring of self and others. If you cannot honor yourself, how can you honor another? Meeting and honoring your vulnerability as the powerful treasure it is, allows you to meet your tender human heart with humility and kindness.\n\nWhen you stand boldly, warts and all, in a world that vilifies you, dare to chase your dreams and the things you want with humility and kindness. By doing this, you will create authentic self-esteem.\n\nEven if that means giving up the false love from authority figures around you, challenging the status quo, and unraveling the core of the truth, so you know you are worthy of authentic love and success. Authentic love and authentic success feel good. Inauthentic love and inauthentic success NEVER feel good. Just know this, success doesn’t make you worthy, it makes YOU happy and there’s a world of difference.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "parent_permlink": "startup",
      "author": "smartgroup",
      "permlink": "how-to-choose-the-right-co-founder-for-your-startup",
      "title": "How To Choose The Right Co-Founder For Your Startup",
      "body": "![Right Co-founder.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZkaCPPTE7vWTrWhFNiCy9zu977MWY76tndr5JrbtMaL1/Right%20Co-founder.jpg)\n\nIf you are looking to grow a successful startup, it will be of benefit to know that most solopreneur startups don’t succeed. Businesses with partners succeed more than those that don’t. VC’s like businesses with founding partners vs. solopreneurs and that’s who gets funded. However, choosing founding partners is like choosing a spouse.\n\nYou are in it together and that means you will need to do some due diligence on them and yourself. Why? Because like a marriage you are bound with these people through thick and thin; in sickness and in health; till death of your business or exit plan do you part. As a smart entrepreneur, you look for something even deeper.\n\nFor example, I currently have a powerful co-founding team. My Co-founding team and I are friends and all of us are entrepreneurs that have business experience outside of our current startup. Everyone has the same great attitude and a work ethic to match. We work hard and have fun. We are like a rock band that travels, lives, and works together in a healthy, fun manner. We have similar goals with complementary skill sets.\n\nMy co-founding team came together by having smart skill sets, and for me this is the most important aspect. My partners empower our projects because they see the world through a different lens than I do. This gives our creative force more abilities, options, and opportunities to seize, because we allow each other’s creativity to thrive. We merged our two skill sets after we deepened our friendship. However, the power of having a great co-founding team is to understand what makes them great, and what they need to have in order to be at their best.\n\nSome of the team is much more introverted, quiet and reflective. Where others are outgoing and extroverted. Some need more peace and quiet. The others need lots of hugs and conversation. As a smart life leader, this requires that I pay attention and DO NOT have a one size fits all leadership style. This is an important skill set.\n\nThe team is the best at what they do. We have both opposite and complementary skills sets and value the gifts and talents we bring. We are all people with a strong love for humanity, and this is our secret ingredient. By supporting the group effort with what they actually need, it helps everyone have success. The biggest success comes by learning how to be the best partner for the team and allowing them to do what they do best.\n\nFor me, it is not always important to find someone who matches my skills sets, but it is important to find a partner that matches my mindset. Communication skills and ethics are key, and just about everything else is learnable. If you can trust your partner, then the foundation of your relationship will be strong and success comes more easily.\n\nTrust takes time to build, but it can’t take a long time. If it does take a long time, you may not be with the right co-founding partner.  Business grows quickly and decisions need to be made in a timely fashion so your partnership must have a growing and deepening trust that moves the business forward.\n\nWhen I choose a co-founding partner, I value them having emotional intelligence over any other skill set they can bring to the table. I too, must be willing to be as emotionally intelligent as I expect them to be. Empathy is also important when starting up. You want to have partners who will not run away if you make a mistake and you don’t want to run if one of your partners makes a mistake. Everyone works hard during startup.\n\nYou want a co-founder that will think about what it must be like to do your job, or walk in your shoes. You also want to give that back because you will be dealing with problems together.  There will be setbacks. No company starts up without a couple of fails. If you can visualize what it must be like to walk in your partner’s shoes, you will develop support for each other vs. judgmental division. I always say, “Focus on what is working and not on what isn’t working.” Unfortunately, most partners do the opposite. This hurts success because what you focus on grows.\n\nBeing able to tell when a co-founder needs encouragement or a supportive word is an undervalued, but powerful skill. To be a successful co-founding team you must realize that one of the most important skill sets is authentic motivation. Tell your partners why they are great and why you love working with them. When you bring out the best in each other, you will have the best as a standard.\n\nFinally, I value the ability to work through disagreements together. Yes, success is great. It feels great and builds wealth and that is awesome. Startup life isn’t all success and happiness. You will have differences of opinion and disagreements. Can you calmly work through those disagreements?\n\nIf not, you are in the wrong co-founding partnership. If a small misunderstanding causes drama, then when the road gets bumpy you will be fighting all the time. Business partnerships that are strong and grow together over time mean long-term success.\n\nIt’s so important to understand how vital a strong co-founding partnership is, because over time you will realize that the asset isn’t the business. The real asset is the quality of the partnership you build.\n\nIf the partnership and team are strong, it won’t matter what business you give a founding team, they will make it a success. If you want to have long-term success, continue to grow your co-founding partnerships until you are invincible and unstoppable.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "parent_permlink": "productivity",
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      "title": "How To Increase Productivity",
      "body": "![Increase productivity.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNcbbHVYPbECbc2ECt63Lm7zWUUSj3jH1bBreTZ3Nt1xZ/Increase%20productivity.jpg)\n\nIncreasing productivity is always a concern for new entrepreneurs. Many have home offices and could avoid every aspect of their business if they wanted to.\n\nYet, some entrepreneurs do more in a day than most people get done in a week.\nThey work hard, play hard and possess other qualities that make a major impact on their performance. Here’s what some really productive people do to ensure productivity.\n\n1) They start: Productive people care about precision and quality. However, it does not have to be perfect when they first start. They can tackle a project and figure it out along the way. An idea that is not started is nothing. Starting is the first avenue to increasing productivity.\n\n2) They don’t react to what other people think: The worker “I have a job” peer group is often concerned about what others think. This always affects productivity. The confusion for many new entrepreneurs is understanding that they are maneuvering to a new peer group. They are moving from the working masses to the business owning masses. It’s a completely different peer group and mindset.  It’s like moving to a new school. Your peers are different. In the beginning, you may not know other entrepreneurs. The working crowd loves the “I fit in” attitude. Pleasing others by doing a good job can mean a promotion or a raise.  Entrepreneurs love the “I stand out” mindset. If they hear criticism, it spurs them on, and they become more productive. They are not trying to please a boss. They are solving a problem and do not collapse because someone doesn’t approve.  When the “I have a job” mindset hears criticism, it usually breaks their spirit down and they often emotionally collapse. This slows their productivity down. To increase productivity, you must begin to engage with your peer group. Find and begin to hang out with other entrepreneurs.\n\n3) They like being accountable: When increasing productivity it helps to have someone to be accountable to. If you are a new startup business and have a home office or are the sole person in your office, then it may be beneficial for you to have a business mentor or mastermind buddy. This can help you maintain an accountability level that will increase your productivity over time.\n\n4) They are organized: One of the key factors to increasing productivity is to simply be organized. There are levels of organization that can help you achieve greater productivity. Organized systems, production and tools will power productivity as it will speed up processes and completion times.\n\n5) They evaluate processes: Increasing productivity happens when you are working in the core aspect of your business and tweaking it to make it more efficient. This means evaluating your processes. This requires a level of awareness and creativity. Every business can increase productivity by paying attention to and evaluating how a process is done and then improving it.\n\nIncreasing productivity is an important aspect of a new startup. It saves money and time as well as gives better client care.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "body": "Congratulations @smartgroup! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :\n\n<table><tr><td>https://steemitimages.com/60x60/http://steemitboard.com/notifications/postallweek.png</td><td>You published a post every day of the week</td></tr>\n</table>\n\n<sub>_[Click here to view your Board](https://steemitboard.com/@smartgroup)_</sub>\n<sub>_If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word_ `STOP`</sub>\n\n\n\n> Support [SteemitBoard's project](https://steemit.com/@steemitboard)! **[Vote for its witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1)** and **get one more award**!",
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      "body": "![Get inside mind.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUzrxnSkh9ByiNNbsF8sqxFupk4wphADJMWpzGP3FjMob/Get%20inside%20mind.jpg)\n\nSure you have practiced your elevator pitch. You know you have 15 to 20 seconds to make your pitch count. You know that growing your business depends on you getting in front of a decision maker and pitching them so that you can close the deal. Wouldn’t it be important to get good at communicating with decision makers?\n\nThis could sound as if I am about to share one of my biggest CEO leadership secrets in order to help you close more deals or get that new contract. I am, by pointing out a huge misunderstanding most business owners overlook that is killing their profits. What is the secret?\n\nDecision makers are everyday people. They are not genders, ages, or unique surveys of special individuals. They are everyday people from everywhere around the world.\n\nIf you want to get inside the mind of a decision maker, go ahead and look in the mirror. You may be disappointed by my answer or feel empowered. I’m not sure. Either way, you just received the keys to the kingdom.\n\nLook in the mirror and ask yourself, what do you want from a company? How do you want to be treated? What is your biggest pain? What would make your life easier? How would you change an existing product and make it better?\n\nForbes listed 5 billionaires who did nothing more than reinvent the way something was done. Blue Apron Co-founder, Matt Salzberg, received a $2 billion valuation for reinventing dinner. Stripe Co-founder, Patrick Collison, a $5 billion valuation for reinventing mobile commerce. They are solving everyday issues for everyday decision makers.\n\nMore buying decisions are made by working people than by big CEO’s. Successful sales means understanding what decisions your customer is making. It is asking yourself how you can help them make the decision to do business with you.\n\nGetting inside the mind of your decision maker is a powerful tool. It means you can grow your business, create more brand loyalty and make more money. It serves no one to stop here and proceed to give you tips to getting inside a decision maker’s head.\n\nI wouldn’t insult you with simple tips because it is about you getting to know your consumer and about developing an authentic relationship by having a conversation with them. This takes a team of people, not just you by yourself.\n\nWe are no longer the, “Pitch you a product,” business society. Instead we are a, “Listen and create a product for you,” business society. Successful business leaders listen to the problems inside their “decision maker’s” life. They research, listen, ask questions and dig deep into the pain their “decision maker,” is experiencing.\n\nBig CEO’s have think tanks of people that help them explore options. Be smart, and help yourself explore your options, understand your client and view product development with everyday simplicity.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "parent_permlink": "leadership",
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      "title": "Top 5 Leadership Styles",
      "body": "![leadership.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXvzF1u5cLx4vg8ea4Tgb2pAGFaxKzYdU8mKSmXxa5JK9/leadership.jpg)\n\nLeadership has become an interesting topic in the age of technology because we have different tools to use that help keep people accountable, without you having to do so. Everyone uses fancy words like C-Suite to describe a very human part of a company’s success.\n\nFor me, I see leadership as a type of accountability for my own behavior. When I’m working as part of a team, like I am with my current business partners, and there’s five of us, leadership becomes an act of kindness and love. It becomes the standard of your partnership’s dignity. Let me explain.\n\nLeadership style is how one gives direction, puts plans into action, and inspires a group. It’s based on their expertise, current awareness level and emotional intelligence.\n\nEach leadership style comes with its pros and cons. You will benefit most by evaluating the kind of business you have and choosing the partner’s leadership style that best suits a current goal. We have five styles of leadership within our company because I have five partners with excellent leadership styles. I would like to share with you what I’ve learned from my partners’ leadership styles and how it has benefited our company.\n\nThis is so important to understand because, partner-built businesses have a 94% success rate and solopreneurs have a 6% success rate. That means your company has a better chance of succeeding with partners then without.\n\nHowever, partnership isn’t an easy task and it requires everyone’s participation. Leadership inside partnership requires that you’re willing to discern when it’s time to put your ego in your back pocket. It has to do with your willingness to look at how you think differently than your partners do.\n\nAs a leader, it’s important that you value the difference between how you think and how they think, because that’s where the magic is.\n\nFor me, I have been excited to learn the leadership skill sets of all my partners. We have a robust and dynamic, proactive, solution-oriented, board of talent. Because I have the unique privilege of leading such a talented group of people, I would like to share with you some of the secrets I’ve learned about how they lead with dignity. These five types of leadership styles represent the things I’ve learned from my amazing partners. Do you have anyone on your team like this?\n\nDemocratic leadership:\n\nDemocratic leadership, also known as ‘participative’, means involving everyone in the business in decision making. The leader allows their employees to contribute and have a say in the input of the company, but the final say is made by the leader. This style boosts the members’ morale through discussions, debates, and exchange of ideas. The level of participation should be managed to avoid anyone being overpowered.\n\nDemocracy, however, can reduce efficiency if a lot of time is spent before coming to a final decision. There must be boundaries around trying to make sure everyone’s happy because that never works. Our company has a high batting average of consensus leadership. However, there is the occasional four yeses and one no. When we have a think tank situation, the democratic leader is at their best.\n\nAuthoritarian leadership:\n\nThe leader in this case takes full control over the employees and makes decisions on their own without being influenced by others. People are obliged to do what the leader has decided is right for the organization because their expertise in that wheelhouse is so strong. This leadership style is efficient because time is valued.\n\nDecisions are made quickly, when someone has strong expertise in the area, we are working in. Work gets done on time with more precision. The con is, if the leader is a jerk, people despise being treated in such ways. However, if it’s done with dignity, it works great.\n\nIn our partnership what is the most rewarding is that everybody keeps in mind, we are deciding what is best for the organization, and not just for ourselves. When all the team thinks like this, giving control to someone who has the company’s best interest at heart, feels safe. However, this is not easy to do when things are stressful.\n\nWhat we have discovered is, if somebody has an expertise in the area requiring leadership, bending to their leadership and expertise benefits everyone. When you give this kind of command to your partnership, a lot gets done, because the person whose wheelhouse it is, can pave the way to success much faster than trying to figure it out as though it’s new.\n\nWe don’t have discussions about who’s in charge, we let the person with the expertise step into the driver seat and steer the project forward. This is so important to understand because if you’re driving the vehicle, you need to be able to let your ego move aside, and, allow another person to drive the vehicle when it’s appropriate, reasonable, and the next best step.\n\nIf there are five partners, all five of them must know when to step out of the driver seat and let another partner with that expertise, drive. This can be the best thing for success when there is uncertainty, technological disruption, or an advance that explodes your company’s growth. This is delegating and positioning your talent. It’s not just about putting the right people on the bus, but, putting the right person behind the wheel of the bus to steer the bus through certain terrain.\n\nLaissez-faire leadership:\n\nThe leadership style of laissez-faire is characterized by allocation of work to members of an organization with little or no supervision. It should be used when partners have a lot of experience, are well trained, and who will work at their best, knowing that they are trusted. The name Laissez Faire leadership sounds like it’s relaxed and laid-back, but the truth is, it’s about trusting the partnership to the point where you do not have unnecessary stress or sleepless nights wondering who wasn’t going to hold up their end of the deal.\n\nNow, I am one who firmly believes that what you focus on grows. If you focus on what people aren’t doing and how crappy they are at something, they will become more of what you are focusing on. In turn, if you focus on their talent and you focus on their skill sets, they will achieve greatness, especially when you trust them, and you focus your attention on their successes.\n\nIf you choose your partners well, they will want to do their best and be part of a team that is the best. They will want to excel along with everybody else who wants to excel. This type of leadership is about rooting the type of culture and mindset you want into your business and leadership team. It’s a type of culture that benefits everyone as they learn to work together, growing a deep trust for each other. This will explode your growth and project satisfaction.\n\nTransactional leadership:\n\nPeople that use this style believe in rewarding positive output and punishing mistakes done by members. Every member sets an attainable goal that they agree to follow, then their leader assesses their results. The upside to this is that allocation of tasks is specific to everyone and its downside is that partners can do little about job satisfaction.\n\nWhen used correctly the power of this leadership style will work, but used incorrectly, it can create toxic work environments. When this style is used well, meaning, you put your “Aces in their places,” there is project satisfaction, and great productivity.\n\nHaving a team of five partners means productivity is not easy to measure without progress reports and key identifiers, such as milestones and needle movers, in place. If you have a new company and you are within the first year of business, getting the systems in place is always the hardest part of the business. As technology grows, you may have to pivot to a new software or technological tool and create a new system.\n\nThis is when you benefit from transactional leadership because it helps measure progress. This is when transactional leadership works well. New systems require attention, precision, and follow up. It’s not always comfortable, but the person who is good at transactional leadership is organized and has an eye for detail.\n\nTransactional leadership requires that you have a good assessment of everybody’s leadership style and skill set. You must know who would be the ace in the place, especially during the time of pivot or disruption. In this style of leadership, there’s usually a big learning curve to adapt to and transactional leaders make great project managers.\n\nTransformational leadership:\n\nWhen it’s your job to inspire, foster affirmative behavior, mentor, and motivate members of an organization, you have become a transformational leader. This is the person who manages the mindset and well-being of the company. It fosters a strong culture with high productivity and team involvement that benefits the entire company.\n\nThe leader sets the tone of the company’s mindset by modeling it for them and using it to help the team achieve their goals. It doesn’t matter what business you own, there are always stressors. You can either go through those stressors with a good attitude or a crappy one. I will tell you, a good attitude has higher productivity than a crappy one.\n\nTransformational leadership is taking a team of people to the next level, wherever that may be. Each partner has a specific level that they are working on that is their next level of achievement. The role of the transformational leader is to make the working environment a place where transformation and change are handled with kindness, intelligence, and discernment.\n\nAll people, all companies, all leaders go through transformation. Change is the natural aspect of the growth or shrinking of a business. Handling change is an art, and if you can create a culture of change and transformation as an accepted part of the business, just like sales are, then transformation becomes an exciting thing to manage.\n\nA true leader benefits the most when they have mindfulness and awareness.\nWhen you have 5 people that are going to decide how your day is going to go, it benefits you most to know what their talents are and to deeply know them as people. If someone has partnered with you to get a business off the ground, it’s more than dating or getting married. It’s about coming together to make a difference in the world by creating something that serves a community.\n\nA partner has entrusted you to help build and serve a community with them. When I understand the amount of trust someone has shared with me by being willing to partner with me, it’s one of the greatest gifts you can receive from anyone. Partners are giving the deepest trust they can give when they ask you to join them. You can cheat in a marriage and it can survive, but when you cheat in business, it usually dies. Partnership in business is a personal development program with an income package to go with it.\n\nPartnership in business is saying something about you. Somebody believes in you. Somebody trusts you with their livelihood and credibility. I understand what an honor it is to have someone, know me, like me, and trust me so much that they would be willing to share a business with me. It’s one thing to have a business idea. It’s another to get it off the ground. Partnership is how big ideas change the world.\n\nIf your partners are willing to embrace these types of leadership skills, your chances of success will grow tenfold. A lot of teams began arguing and fighting because they do not have respect for someone else’s leadership style. They are unwilling to see anyone’s leadership style except their own. This is the demise of many a company.\n\nWhen you understand how important each leadership style is, you can embrace it and use it to the best of your ability. There are some instances when a Democratic Leadership style is needed and when a Transactional leadership style is needed.\n\nIf you want to succeed with your team, then the best thing you can do is get to know them. Watch them in action. They will show you the strength of their leadership style and you will be able to identify it.\n\nYou will be able to harness the talent of your team in a way that creates miracles instead of mayhem. This means to have mindfulness and awareness, of the greatness that exists in your partnership, before you look at any tiny mistakes. This is so important to understand because mistakes happen whether you have a good team or no team. Since mistakes are part of success, then focus on the greatness of your team and not their itty-bitty mistakes.\n\nMy partnership prides itself on being a smart, proactive, team. We thrive using these styles of leadership and our mottos are:\n\n“Whatever starts here improves lives”\n\n“No burden is too heavy, if everyone lifts”\n\n“We make a positive difference in the world”\n\n“We achieve success together”\n\n“We have fun”\n\nWhatever your leadership style and business venture is, may the wind be at your back.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "permlink": "why-daily-support-equals-daily-success",
      "title": "Why Daily Support Equals Daily Success",
      "body": "![Daily Support.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbamtnsdt2MisPP488SGM77LoWtjE1oSRhhE36ruBihmx/Daily%20Support.jpg)\n\nIf you own a business, you will more than likely have a team of people that work with and depend on you. I know I do! But as the CEO, what do they depend on me for? They depend on me to provide them with the tools they need to effectively bring to life established business targets and sales goals. My job is not to oversee the production of these goals. My job is to give them the tools they need to realize the goals.\n\nMy aim is to give them the mindset and support they need to achieve their mission. My main purpose is to serve and support our talent into achieving these targets. Often at Smart, we ask, “How can I empower and engage creativity and confidence in order to build a strongly focused productive environment that allows for success and ease?”\n\nThis is important to understand because there is a talent shortage and your talent is your biggest asset. If they aren’t productive, you are out of business. When I want to foster their success, I do it the smart way. I create a level of ease that helps them perform at their best.\n\nWhen you apply this method of daily support, over time you will notice that your people will feel more at ease and supported. This will cause their productivity to grow.\n\nIt must be authentic and heartfelt in order for it to have a lasting effect. Remember your job is to serve and support.\n\nHere is my list of the top 12 simplest forms of support I use on a daily basis.\n\n1) You’re doing great: Offering encouragement is one of the best ways to make people feel supported. It helps them understand that you value them and their contributions to the project.\n\n2) We’re in this together: This reassurance is powerful. They understand you have their back and that they are not alone. This helps your talent feel at ease. There is a sense of collaboration and community and this brings a feeling of loyalty and pride. It promotes accountability and helps keep egos in check.\n\n3) I trust you: The best way to build trust is to give trust. If your talent feels your confidence in them and their decision making, they will also feel more confident and more at ease. When you trust their actions, they feel more motivated because they can sense that you have a high opinion of them and this builds a strong bond to your leadership.\n\n4) Please: Never underestimate the power of saying “please.” When things are hectic and stressful saying an authentic please brings in a sense of kindness and calm. It lets your team know that you have confidence in them and they will respond with the same level of kindness.\n\n5) Thank you for that: Nothing is more motivating than sincere appreciation. It uplifts the well-being of your talent. When your talent makes effort, recognizing it produces more motivation and this gives you more success.\n\n6) Tell me more about that: Being present, attentive and interested in what your talent is telling you will keep ideas flowing. Not all ideas will pan out, but you only need one good idea to add 7 figures to your bottom line. Your talent has that one million-dollar idea; you just have to listen for it.\n\n7) It’s your call: Deferring to my talent’s genius is why I hired them in the first place. We encourage leadership in our office and that means empowering people to take the helm of a decision process.\n\n8) I don’t know: When you add a heartfelt, “I don’t know,” you invite your talent to become inquisitive and find answers. You become authentic and human to them and you model humility and safety. It becomes okay for them to “not know” either. This is important because you then invite inquisitiveness and non-judgment into your working environment.\n\n9) How can I support you: This is the game changing secret sauce in our working environment. If your team understands that you are here to serve them and help them succeed, they will rise up and meet you in a mutually supportive process. This powers momentum and enthusiasm in a way that has to be experienced to believe.\n\n10) I’m sorry: This is a multi-use practice. It can be used to express empathy and to model humility. Either way you choose to use it, you strengthen your influence and credibility with your talent because they can trust you to show yourself to them willingly either empathetically or in humility.\n\n11) What do you think: Asking your talent what they think about an idea helps them feel valued. It also breeds commitment when you ask them their opinion. Being open to listening strengthens their resolve to create success and this is powerful when it is naturally part of your working environment.\n\n12) I’m proud of you: Nothing creates momentum like a job well done that has been valued and acknowledged. When you are proud of your talent they shine and become proud of themselves. The power of building this kind of authentic self-esteem inside your business powers productivity better than anything else.\n\nThese 12 go-to sayings create productivity, and support. They empower long-term progress and create success in your business. Lasting success is built on strong teams of people that can rise to new levels month after month, year after year because they have the support that creates winning, appreciation, ease and well-being.\n\nVickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.",
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      "author": "smartgroup",
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      "title": "How Learning To Be A Writer Increased My Success",
      "body": "![Writing.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmWJ1rxmxkoyEXQDoK67iQszGzmXvHCsugHpa5Aea21ysu/Writing.jpg)\n\nI can still remember the conversation like it was yesterday. My editor and friend, with her fabulous degree in journalism, calmly walking over to me and placing her hands on my shoulders. Then bending down to my right ear and quietly whispering into it, so no one else could hear but me, “Vickie… I’m going to show you how to use spell check, and if you don’t use it, I’m not going to edit your work anymore.” That’s how bad my writing was. I had a fabulous degree in accounting and zero writing skills.\n\nI wasn’t good at spelling; I wasn’t good at grammar and punctuation and I’m still not. I was overly sensitive and emotionally reactionary to any bit of feedback about my writing, making it hard for my editors to work with me. I took every edit personally. I was an editor’s worst nightmare. I’m still not a great writer. I’ve never taken a writing class. I’ve never enjoyed a journalism course. But I’ve doubled my success because of writing and I suck at it compared to others.\n\nI’m a self-taught writer, which means my work can be full of errors that only journalists and grammar police pay attention to. (Like the one I just did ending my sentence in a preposition.) My editors eliminate most of them for me and sometimes one sneaks by them.\n\nWhat’s important to know is that I never intended on becoming a writer. In fact, I fell into it as a marketing strategy. I wanted to get my message out to the right audience and it just so happened that my audience likes to read a lot.\nI was willing to embrace the learning curve in order to grow into becoming a halfway decent writer, so that my marketing strategy would work. This way, I could speak directly with my clients. This single strategy has opened a lot of doors for me and has made me millions, so that now I live my dream life.\n\nDespite my personal writing dysfunctions, I’ve now written over 23 books. I’m an international best-selling author and writing is my favorite form of communicating. Why? Because, people who read are more intelligent, more reasonable, and usually more emotionally resourced than the average non-reader. In fact, many readers enjoy listening to and understanding other people’s opinions and points of view.\n\nMost readers are usually well-rounded and understand that there are always two sides to every story. Readers are open to listening to both sides and finding where the two meet. Most readers are well-versed and even enjoy listening for other people’s viewpoints because it helps them create discernment, while celebrating the ideas of others.\n\nWhen I write to these kinds of people they overlook my mistakes and pay attention to my message. Readers are less judgmental and evaluate more, because to read is to listen, learn, consider, and evaluate a point of view. Readers explore ideas and enjoy the treasures locked within the written word. Their joy is to seek them out and grow from them. People who read a lot are easier to talk with because they are actively listening.\n\nI have become a better person because of my writing. I’ve had to become less defensive and more discerning. I’ve had to personally develop into a person who can consider feedback and how it makes me better. I’ve had to move past review bombs and haters and consider the feedback from my readers. Learning to write isn’t just a valuable skill set; it is the skill set that has withstood the test of time. The pen has been mightier than the sword, or in today’s terms, the keyboard is mightier than the sword. When I read and write, everything about my life improves.\n\nThe more I write, the better I become. However, the hidden gift in this is that my message becomes stronger because I get to practice expressing it in written form first and when I speak it, I am more articulate. The power of writing isn’t necessarily about the person who gets to read your work, but the person who you become as you grow into becoming a writer.\n\nFor me, when an author crafts or sculpts a sentence or paragraph that is beautiful beyond words, it’s like having dessert. Writing is enriching on so many levels. It adds quality of life. It has helped me learn to think and construct a message and thus, helped my speaking ability. Which is what I’m using right now as I voice type this article to you.\n\nThe reason writing has increased my success is because it’s a form of allowing an intelligent client to see your level of capability in your industry. When they read your work, they get a taste of who you are and how you operate. This single gift has made my business thrive without having to force thousands and thousands of dollars into marginal advertising schemes that don’t work.\n\nI get to share with them my expertise, my attention to detail, and my point of view about the industry I’m writing about. When you write, you’re creating a client. That’s how I see my writing. I want them to know, like, and trust me. I want them to experience my flair, originality, creativity; and writing is a good outlet for that.\n\nWriting gets you invitations that you may not get using other platforms such as: Speaking engagements, being featured at seminars and workshops that have made me fortunes because I’ve been invited to speak.\n\nWriting has made all those things possible for me and I invite you into the adventure and self-discovery of becoming a writer. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being willing to explore the depth of you, finding your message, as well as discovering, learning, and growing from the message of others. It’s the longest standing art form out there and it will continue to be viable well into the future.",
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