Tom, Carol and Jim have an attitude problem.

If you think business stinks, guess what?

        It does.

It becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you're not looking for customers — business — every day,  it's almost certain you won't find any. You can listen to the The Secret all you want. I just don’t see how it will help.

Hockey great Wayne Gretzky, said, "You'll always miss 100 percent of the shots you do not take."

If you're not looking for new business, what are you doing every day?

• Pushing papers back and forth on the desktop?
• Creating proposals for people who aren't going to buy?
• Calling on the same people you've called on for the past year, who aren't available, and don't return your phone calls?
• Going to meetings that don't accomplish anything?
• Telling everybody how busy you are?
• Being in the thick of the thin, in other words.

For many years I've wondered why bright, successful and talented people's careers level off and reach a plateau.

These are my  conclusions:

• They don't market.
• They stop prospecting.
• They stop looking for new customers.
• They do everything they can so they don't have to pick up the phone and call someone.

What Tom, Carol and Jim might be missing

Tom, Carol and Jim don't have any goals. They don't have elevator speeches; they don't ask the right questions. They complain that business is tough, but don't do anything about it. They've given up. They've quit.

Common ground for winners and losers

Winners and losers have one thing in common: they are always having a conversation in their minds. The winner is always saying something like, “I wonder what I can do here to make this circumstance work for me. I bet if I look long enough, there is a way. Maybe if I try this….”?

The conversation that goes nowhere…but feels good to some

The loser, by contrast, is having a very different conversation: “Oh, this will never work. It is just a waste of time to try. It has never worked before. It probably won’t work this time.”

Where does “attitude” come from, anyway?

You can't cut someone open and find something called “attitude.” Attitude, morale, high spirits and even success, are internal conversations. Those conversations lead to very different actions and very different actions lead to very different results. You can choose your conversations if you want to.

Mindset drives mental conversations, and they drive actions

That is just my observation. You have to see for yourself. My coaching clients are all having their best year, ever, this year, and they are all having “can-do” internal conversations that lead to actions. And the actions achieve good results. These actions are often not comfortable, but do yield nice fat results in terms of money and self esteem.

Does this really work?

Most of my coaching clients have competitors who are having their worst year in a decade. The only difference, in my experience, is the nature of their internal conversations, each and every day.

This is one of my favorite poems;

The Man Who Knows He Can

If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you like to win, but you think you can’t,
It is almost certain you won't.
If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost,
For out in the world you’ll find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will,
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are.
You've got to think high to rise;
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win the Prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But sooner or later the man who wins,
Is the man who knows He can!

— Anonymous

Which conversation do you want?

You can go through life with an attitude problem, like Tom,
Carol and Jim. Let me know how that works out for you.

On the other hand

Alternatively, you can have an attitude, or internal conversation, that makes 2008 your best year ever. The choice is really yours.

Cheers,