Check out what we’re up to in Melbourne. Sorry, this one is girls only!

To register, contact mia@miamunro.com

Well I warned you I was up to something. The last three days Greg and I have sequestered ourselves away on the Gold Coast putting the finishing touches on our new site.

And now its ready to go! Hooray!

We have just gone live with something we believe will shake up the entire public speaking industry. That’s because it’s going to put public speaking tools and strategies into the hands of regular business owners CHEAPER, FASTER and MORE EFFECTIVELY than ever before.

And this is your opportunity to have a sneak preview.

You see, we have been putting together an exciting step-by-step, hold your hand mentoring program that reveals everything I learnt in the last three years in the seminar game. As you probably know, in my first 12 months speaking and selling from stage, I made over $1.25 million in sales. In fact with over 3000 hours on stage, selling for my supper, I thought I might have an idea or two to share with you about how you can blow the lid on your own business by creating and delivering some killer presentations!

Anyway, here’s the exciting bit. We’re launching the site right now, and of course we’re keen to get some sales straight away! So we’re throwing in some bonuses which we hope will make the whole thing a “no-brainer” for you if you’re intending to sell your business to a group.

In addition to the great stuff you get standard as part of the program (you’ll see the list on www.SecretsOfSellingFromStage.com/signup.html), you’ll also get these things:

- Half price membership for the first 100 people. The standard price is $99 a month, but if you’re one of the first 100 people to join you get it for just $49 a month for as long as you stay a member.

- What’s more we’re running a 3-day intensive speaking workshop in May. This is not a sell-fest – I guarantee that you will walk out with a planned presentation ready to go! Tickets are $2,000 per person, but IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE FIRST FIVE PEOPLE to join the mentoring program you get one ticket to the workshop included in your membership.

- The workshop comes with 2 hours of my personal time to critique your presentation and giving you one-to-one feedback. This alone is valued at $3,500. So if you’re one of the first 5 people to join the program, you also get this great bonus.

I’m sending this offer out to my close friends and past clients first (that’s why you’re getting this!), so you get a head-start. Later today I’ll send this same offer to the rest of my list, as well as a bunch of other lists we’ve teed up. If you’re keen to lock in the charter membership price of $49 a month, please don’t wait and “think about it”.

Here’s the link to check out the site:
www.SecretsOfSellingFromStage.com

And here’s the link to join the program if you’d rather do that and read the details later!
www.SecretsOfSellingFromStage.com/signup.html

Let me know what you think.

I hope you get as much out of it as we have putting it all together!

Have fun!

Cheers,
Jo

Hi guys,

This is just a quick post to let you know that something very exciting is going to be happening tomorrow. Over the last few months Greg and I have been working on something which we are really thrilled about, and we will be launching it tomorrow. Yay!!

We are on the Gold Coast at the moment, putting the finishing touches to a little something which I belive is going to be one of the best value offerings of its kind out there.

If you know me, and what I’ve done in the past you’ll be thinking :”why on earth did it take you so long Joey?!” So keep your eyes peeled.

I wanted to let all my close friends know first because there will be a limited offer that I will reveal tomorrow, and you guys deserve pole position to get the goodies.

Keep your eye on your inbox tomorrow, if I have your email… otherwise come back to the blog on Wednesday the 19th of March, Queensland time, Australia… and check out what mischief we’ve been up to!!

Love Joey

Your lifestyle is ultimately your life’s work. We are all artists, whether we acknowledge that or not. And every day we are gifted with a canvas upon which to create our design. We are now operating in the Information Age, at a time of great wealth and great possibility. Yet seemingly intelligent people continue to operate under old assumptions. Too many people I know “work hard” for no other reason than they thought that’s what they were expected to do. There has never been a greater time than now to design a life the way you want it.
In this article we will look at the 7 Golden Rules for Lifestyle-centric Business Owners. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll go into each of them in more detail. But for today it’s the overview. My greatest wish for the world is that everyone lives a life of self-expression. By that I mean that one’s life is an expression of that unique identity within them. It honestly breaks my heart when I speak to business owners who describe their lifestyle as anything less than awesome. As business owners we are in pole position to craft our lives the way we want to. For heaven’s sake, if the guy or girl running the show can’t have it they way they want it, what hope is there for anyone else? I think it’s just that we get lazy. We get lazy because the truth is questioning our assumptions and making changes in the way we operate is actually harder to do than work 70 hours a week.
So let’s take a moment to break it all down into manageable pieces and digest each of them like small slices of the best brie.
1. Lifestyle First: Define Your Rules

First things first. Go back to basics. Why did you start a business in the first place? What did you want to achieve from it? Some people would say “to make a million dollars a year” or “to be my own boss”. But I would put forward that those are simply means to an end. The “end” would be what having those things gets for you. So for instance what does making a million dollars a year get for you?
Well your answer might be freedom to travel, to spend time with my kids, to build a secure future. Now the grand irony is, if you work your guts out 70 hours a week in a business in the hope that one day you’ll have “freedom to travel and spend time with the kids”, what happens to the kids and travel in the mean time?
So Greg and I decided to do it a different way around. We started by imagining our ideal lifestyle. For us that involved travel, a certain level of luxury, spending time with our children as they grew (no we don’t have any yet and we’re not pregnant for those rumour-millers out there!) and so on. We were really clear we wanted to create a lifestyle with ultimate freedom. From this vision we then created our “Non-negotiable Lifestyle Criteria”. I have written about these before. These are criteria that we created that set up a filter through which all business opportunities were run. If the opportunity didn’t fit the criteria it got trashed. It made life very simple.
So when starting out in business, or even just reviewing why you’re where you are, start by defining your rules. What will you NOT do for money!!?
2. Passion and Authenticity

Once you have defined your rules of the game, your criteria that are non-negotiable in terms of selecting your business vehicle, then you come back to your centre and find out what your passionate about. I have seen too many people follow their passion first and burn out doing it, until their passion is something they loathe, because they didn’t do step one first!
That said you’ll never stick with something long enough to be truly successful unless you are passionate about it. I have a million ways (well, maybe thats a little superlative, but many ways) to help people uncover passion, and discover the self that they want to express in the world… keep your eyes peeled for the Passion Post in the next couple of weeks!

3. The Bigger Pie Principle

Ah… how many times have I seen people (and I include myself in this), decide that 100% of something small is better that 20% of something big. Listen, it’s not that either stand is more right than the other, but be aware of it. Most entrepreneurs I know who have at least a modicum of success started out with a minimum of three people on the team. It just seems to be the number that works. It’s a good sturdy number. There are very few solo-preneurs that I speak to who honestly enjoy doing everything themselves. (I am open to comment and being proven wrong!)
So in a nutshell the Bigger Pie Principle is the old adage of “rather than squabbling over pieces of the pie, how can you create a much larger pie that we can all share in”? In fact at the moment when Greg and I appear to have found ourselves once more being inundated with opportunities (can you believe we have had 2 multimillion dollar business offers in the last 5 days. Far out, I can’t!).. any way the question I keep asking in my mind is “what’s the bigger pie here?”
4. You have to spend money to make money

OOOOh! I can hear the shudder among personal development seminar attendees thinking “No! They told me that I just had to have a good idea”. Look at some level it’s true, but I have to say you get a whole lot done a good deal quicker if you’ll just pay the right person to do the job. I’m not saying anything here about who’s money you have to spend. I’m all for Other People’s Money. But get used to creating flow… money in…. money out!
A friend of mine Daniel Priestley put it this way: “If you’re a boxer you’re gonna get hit in the face.” Greg likes to say “If you’re gonna make an omelette you have to scramble some eggs”. Basically if you’re in business, you’re going to have to spend some money! For us that’s why we are paying our writers to write, our techies to design software, our event managers to plan events and on and on. Could we have done it all ourselves? Yeah. But I have better things to do with my life (see point 1); which brings me to …
5. Stick to what you’re good at.

his is the single greatest key to effectiveness EVER! I know my time is best spent in front of people inspiring them to take action. Perhaps even in front of my computer writing to them to take action! But it sure as heck ain’t in reconciling the bank accounts or managing the team. It’s simply not my forte. I affectionately refer to my role in the team as “the Performing Monkey”. A little derogatory? Perhaps, but it keeps my ego in check and means I keep my focus in the right place. By allowing the other team members to do what they are good at our effectiveness goes through the roof. And its more fun actually. Can’t imagine doing it any other way any more!
So what are your strengths? And how quickly can you get someone to do the other stuff… and how quickly can you stop being a control freak and allow them to do it?
6. Ask better questions of new trends

OK: Facebook case in point. How many people did (or are still doing) the “Oh that stupid thing, what a waste of time”. Or “it’ll never last”. Instead of trying to find reasons why something won’t work in your business so you get to win the “I was right award”: get over yourself. Ask a better question. Ask how could this work to grow my business? Chances are many things will assist you if only you get out of your own way long enough. This is not to say take up every opportunity… always assess in terms of impact and ease, but don’t dismiss it before you’ve assessed it.
7. The Land of Missed Opportunities

My partner Greg lives in this land. Well… not that’s not the right way of putting it! Its more like his glasses are especially treated to see the missed opportunity in everything. He’s incredible at it. And according to him most businesses are huge great fountains of missed opportunity. More money to be made from existing customers, less money to be spent on telecoms, joint ventures to be tapped into left, right and centre. You name it. Get yourself a Greg in your business!
8. The Biggest and Best Golden Rule Ever: QUESTION YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

Whenever you hit a problem the best question you can ask yourself is “what are my assumptions here”. Just last night I was getting all in a tizz about the best course of action on a particular business opportunity we’re considering. Greg asked at that point why are we on this path?” And that started a whole barrage of assumption questioning that ultimately gained us some clarity. My favourite question is “when did we decide that…?”
So if you’re faced with a problem at any time in your lifestyle-centric business creation always question your assumption. Just because it doesn’t work in an Australian market doesn’t mean that Malaysia isn’t crying out for it. When did you decide you had to travel 3 days a week when you’d rather be at home? Who said you couldn’t afford a PA when you can hire someone for $4 an hour in India? Question your assumptions… and keep coming back to your rules.
In summary

I hope you’ve found something useful in this little article. Over the next few weeks we’ll be going into each of the steps in more detail, as well as bringing along guests who have created “Ultimate Lifestyle Businesses” and finding out what their secrets were.
Make sure you subscribe to the RSS (that means you get instant updates on your computer every time there’s a new post) or subscribe by email… or come back and visit every coupla days. There’s lots of good fun stuff coming you way!!
Love Joey.

Hi!

Happy Chinese New Year to you. It is the year of the rat! The beginning of the cycle. So we’ve decided to get on board. This is an exciting post for me because things are going to be a – changing. Many of you have been calling in on my blog from time to time over the last 4 months or so. As you have probably noticed Greg and I are gearing up for some pretty big changes in business and life generally. And to reflect that change I am re-designing my blog and tweaking its direction.

You see, the more time I spend talking with business owners, the more I realise how few businesses are designed to fulfil the lifestyle desires of the owners. Most people have ended up in the business they’re in by accident, or they had grand plans about what they wanted their business to look like, but lost site of it somewhere along the way.

I am convinced that it is entrepreneurs and business people that are going to make the biggest difference to the world. Did you know that according to a Bank of America study entrepreneurs donate 25% more than other wealthy individuals to charitable causes? But not just that, when a business is designed to fulfil a need, to solve a social problem or in some other way make a meaningful contribution, people are employed, homes are created and families’ lives are secure.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur… they are a rare breed. Many people call themselves entrepreneurs, but they aren’t really. Did you know the word entrepreneur comes from the French: entreprendre- to undertake. So technically speaking, an entrepreneur is one who undertakes. So these rare individuals need support. They need to be encouraged and supported to make their contribution, because they are the catalysts for change.

So entrepreneurs and business owners: this site will be for you. So my vision for my blog moving forward is a resource for entrepreneurs and small business owners. When we re-launch, it is my intention to interview successful business owners and entrepreneurs to find out what makes them tick. Find out what gets them out of bed in the morning. And find out what strategies they are employing as we move further into the information age to reflect the changing needs and desires in the market place. How is the information age changing the way we do business, and the scope of what we can achieve through business?

Through the articles, interviews and other resources you’ll be finding here, I hope to provide you with inspiration, motivation, strategic advice and up to the minute notification of what’s new out there, solving the latest problems the small business owner or entrepreneur faces. You’ll find reminders to keep designing your business to support rather than hinder your lifestyle, and ways to keep keyed in and excited about the journey. Your’s is a great gift, the ability to envision a different future, and to be able to bring that future into the present through business. I hope to be able to serve you in the best way I know how.

Come back over the next weeks to see the changes and expect a lot of great value as we move forward! Oh… and it should be easier to read too!

Wishing you a prosperous life of contribution, and Business On Purpose.

Warm regards,

Joanna