Don't Waste Your Hard-Earned Cash on Irrelevant Company Swag - Create Gifts Instead

Just about every company that manages to get off the ground for a few years at some point makes the decision to acquire ad specialty items or swag. But many don't take the time to consider the intended effect they are hoping to create with their customers before forking over hundreds of dollars for these promotional products. Instead, with no real strategy at play, a logo that has no business being there, is slapped on a random object and passed out to customers with the hope it will create a sale. I mean just how many company logo branded pens, calendars, koozies or stress balls can you have? Are these things really so compelling that you are immediately going to start buying from the person who sent it to you?

When swag serves no purpose, it truly falls into the category of trinkets and trash (with an emphasis on the trash part). And the trash continues to pollute the world when marketers fail to address the most critical component of a promotional product buy - that the swag must create an emotional connection to the user for it to be effective. When that happens, it's no longer just swag, it becomes a gift.

Think about one of the most successful swag items of all time: the Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt. The Hard Rock Cafe is a themed, rock-n-roll, museum-like experience with memorabilia on display throughout. But at the end of the day it's still just a restaurant. I mean doesn't your local Italian restaurant have Italian-themed pictures and paintings on the wall? So why don't you go buy their t-shirt? You don't buy that t-shirt because more than likely it creates no logical or emotional connection.  

What the Hard Rock Cafe does that makes their promotional product so successful is that it puts the city name underneath the Hard Rock Cafe logo on the t-shirt. And because there is only one Hard Rock Cafe in every city, the location is able to create a meaningful connection to that place. I mean come on, do you really go on vacation to New York City to dine at the Hard Rock Cafe? No, but I bet you want the cool t-shirt that says you went to New York City!

To create gifts of value (not useless swag), you need to be thoughtful. To be thoughtful with any marketing simply means you are able to connect your company, idea or product in a meaningful way to the needs of your prospective customer. Really, that is the magic formula, and it doesn't matter what industry you are in, you can create a connection to your customers with swag and immediately start to earn brand loyalty. But you'll actually have to do some critical thinking first to accomplish this feat. To identify the appropriate promotional product, you must completely understand when your customers want to see you, where they want to spend time with you, and of course, why they want to interact with you. 

When Do Your Customers See You?

Do your customers see you in the morning or afternoon, when it's cold or hot, night or day, etc. - you catch my drift? When you think about the timing of when your customers interact with you, is there swag that can help facilitate that interaction? A common promotional item you see are branded coffee mugs and tumblers. Half the time you see these branded coffee cups, they have some random logo of a manufacturing company or consultancy who has nothing to do with coffee or when people drink coffee - no connection. But say you are trying to promote a morning radio program or T.V. show. I can think of no better giveaway than a coffee mug or tumbler as it immediately helps prompt the recipient to tune in while they enjoy their morning coffee. Timing of course is everything, even with promotional products.

Where Do Your Customers Spend Time With You?

As we previously touched on, are customers spending time with the Hard Rock Cafe in just the restaurant or is it really the city that they're visiting for the first time? The affiliation with each city that the Hard Rock Cafe has is what makes the experience extra unique. So a t-shirt that says you've been to New York City, Chicago or Nashville is extremely appropriate. That's an instant connection. So of course, thinking about the right promotional product must take location into account, and it doesn't just have to be in the geographic definition of location. For instance, would the creator of the latest popular app really make a connection to their customers with branded notepads or t-shirts? Probably not. Those items don't connect to the customer's location. Rather with an app, your customers are of course spending time with you on their phones (think screen cleaners, pens with an end for touch screens, etc.).

Why Do Your Customers Interact With You?

The last and most critical consideration of an effective swag piece is to think about why customers interact with your brand. This can be the trickiest concept to identify but once you clearly understand why your customers interact with you, you'll immediately be able to come up with promotional gifts that help to strengthen that interaction. For my printing business, many of our long-term customers choose to interact with us because we've developed deep personal relationships. When it's personal, you can reflect this relationship in your gifts, and that simply means choosing gifts that you know the customer will personally enjoy (branded golf balls for the golfer, food and gift baskets for the foodie, etc.). It works because you know them on a personal level. However, a brand new customer, one where the relationship hasn't yet developed beyond simple professional interactions, might be turned off by a gift basket as it's a little more personal (I emphasize might as everyone loves free food!). Instead, for the professional-only relationship, you should focus on gifts that reinforce how your business can help them (ex - a personalized Yankee Candle given to businesses by a cleaning company might help to reinforce a cleaner, better smelling environment).

When choosing swag, the careful consideration of the when, where and why of customer interactions can't be understated. So if your next promotional product doesn't cover at least one of these points, don't be disappointed when your customer trashes it! Buying swag can be one of the best ways in the world to promote your business, but like any gift, if you don't thoughtfully spend the time necessary to make it great, it won't be memorable.

Google Isn't Perfect and Why You Must Build Your Brand Beyond SEO & Online Marketing

My business depends on the popularity of direct mail. Of course it's no surprise then if I tell you that the past few years have been a little scary with all the popular attention digital marketing has received. What started with simple banner ads and basic Google adword campaigns has morphed into an all encompassing online lead generation strategy where only the strong survive. Those with the resources and smarts to ensure they consistently rank #1 in Google are capturing market share at unprecedented rates never before seen. And is this a fair system? Is trusting the wisdom of Google a fair way to decide the outcome of an economy? 

Today, if your not on page one of Google then you're all but dead to the online world looking for your services. The solution? Hire a really good SEO expert to do a number on your website. But, in doing so you run the risk of segmenting your brand away from potential customers. Take for instance the tale of two banks. Say I'm new to the Tulsa market, so I do a search for "Tulsa banks" in Google. Note - the results of this search were captured on October 14th, 2013 and are subject to change. At the top of this search is F&M Bank, a small local bank with nine Oklahoma locations and three in Dallas. In addition to F&M, four other local banks also reach page one but to my amazement, I have to go to page two to find Bank of Oklahoma (BOK). Not only is BOK the largest local bank in Tulsa, with over 100 Oklahoma locations, it's one of the 50 largest banks in the United States! My eyes must be deceiving me for how could BOK be on page two!?! 

What is it that F&M Bank is doing so well that BOK isn't? Well, maybe not anything. If I tweak my search to "Oklahoma banks", suddenly information about BOK appears but I have to go all the way to page six to see F&M Bank. So is F&M good for Tulsa but not the rest of Oklahoma?  Not at all, but their SEO and content marketing strategy could potentially limit them to these types of results. Because with SEO you have to make choices. And these choices often disqualify you from a key segment of customers you would like to work with.

One of those critical choices F&M Bank has made that influences their Google ranking on certain keywords is with their website title, "F&M Bank | Tulsa - Owasso, OK | Dallas - Fort Worth, TX". By including Tulsa in their title, they are making F&M Bank more relevant to Google in regards to being affiliated with Tulsa. And because Tulsa is a relatively small market, something as little as a title can make a huge deal. But not surprisingly though, they do not show up on page one of a "Dallas banks" search, due to greater competition in a much bigger market (in fact they don't even rank in the top 100 results for "Dallas banks"). So how exactly can F&M expect to grow in the Dallas market when there is little chance they'll ever rank high enough to gain attention via internet search results? Note - the Google algorithm uses hundreds of factors to index and rank web pages with page titles being just one small influential cog in the big machine. To understand other ways you can influence your ranking, consult an SEO specialist or contact me and I'll be happy to give you a starting point.

The reality that F&M Bank and businesses everywhere face is that in order to gain attention and grow, more traditional forms of advertising must be incorporated. The last thing that I would tell you is that SEO isn't important. To the contrary it is extremely important. But, SEO and content marketing is a bit of a zero-sum game typically not effective enough to enable a business to gain all the customers it needs to thrive. And that is exactly the reason why a supposedly old-age business like mine, that offers print and direct mail solutions, can continue to service customers, add value and actually grow our sales in the year 2013.

Every year, billions of advertising dollars are spent with newspapers, billboards, magazines, radio, television, email marketing, word of mouth, POP displays, branding campaigns, messaging campaigns, print ads and of course direct mail. So, for anyone to tell you that print or any of these other forms of advertising are dying, they just aren't educated enough on marketing to realize that all of these continue to generate customers a return on investment. And perhaps the greatest irony of continuing traditional advertising methods is that they typically help you improve the results of your overall SEO and content marketing plan. But because you may then spend less on digital marketing, the fact that going traditional still works is the dirty little truth many SEO marketers just don't want you to know.


Author's note - I'd love to hear from you about what traditional advertising methods work for you. If you are kind enough to comment on this post or share with your network, please give a shout out to your own favorite old school advertising method. #directmail

Pushing Through: Go Daddy

"The temptation to quit will be the greatest just before you are about to succeed."  - Chinese Proverb

The temptation to quit was never more real than for Bob Parsons, the head and founder of The Go Daddy Group, Inc, just a decade ago. In a recent interview with Paul Anderson, writer of 50 Entrepreneurs, Bob Parsons revealed that he almost gave up on Go Daddy back in 1999. While today Go Daddy is the world's largest provider of domain name registrar's, in 1999, shortly after the dot com bubble bursted, they nearly ran out of money and Bob Parsons was left with a decision to either cut his losses or potentially go broke.

Parsons was confronted with the moment of truth so in an effort to sort it all out, he took a vacation to Hawaii to clear his head and make the ultimate decision on the future of his company. Something funny happened to him on that trip. While going through the deepest soul searching imaginable, he met a parking attendant who despite being Parsons age, was absolutely content with what he was doing. This man was happy and he loved his work. At that moment Bob Parsons gained his perspective. Describing the moment, Bob states, "And it hit me.  I said to myself, if this business fails, the worst thing that can happen is I'll be parking cars, right? It was in that moment I decided that I was going to stick with the business no matter what. I was broke before and happy as hell, I could be again, and I didn't need all that money to be happy." Bob stuck with it and within two years, Go Daddy's cash flow situation was much improved and they were well on their way to being the hugely successful company that they are today.

Throughout history, individuals have encountered the same scenario as Bob Parsons - whether to quit and cut their losses or to push on through and potentially accomplish something great. The fear of failure is often so strong that many people give up too early and are hesitant to take their ultimate personal risk. It is human nature to avoid negative and harmful situations so it becomes easier to choose the path of least resistance as opposed to the path might create a better life for you and others.

For Bob Parsons, a Vietnam veteren, he gained internal strength and learned how to overcome personal resistance in war. If you can accept that you might die tomorrow but yet are still able to push on through and do your job, then you are surely mentally equipped to face the prospects of a failing business. For most of us though the idea of losing your job, running a business into the ground or simply failing to achieve what you set out to can be so overwhelming that our mind tells us that it is the worst imaginable outcome.

To overcome this, we need to honestly tell ourselves what the worst thing that can happen truly is. Are you clinging to a job because you fear that you won't succeed doing something else? If so, how hard would it be to get back to the exact same position you are in now if all else fails? You've done it once so it should be easier the second time around.

Alternatively, you may be experiencing failure in what you consider to be your life's dream. Does this mean that you should quit because success seems bleak?  Think about Bob Parsons and ask yourself what is the worst thing that will happen to me if I fail? Can you get a job doing something else and still be happy?

Pushing through and taking risks require that you have a clear understanding of what failure means. For most of us, it doesn't mean your world is going to end. Setbacks are inevitable but the trick is to push through and do what we know in our heart is truly important. The trick is to remind ourselves that we can always park cars and still be happy.

Sticking to The Main Thing: Better Ingredients, Better Pizza

In a recent interview with Success Magazine (click here to read the article), John Schnatter, founder and CEO of the pizza giant Papa John’s, was quoted as saying “Everything we do, we try to do it just a little bit better, and that costs money. We’re willing to pay up. I bet, on average, our competitors can make a pizza for 2 bucks. That same pizza will cost us $3-plus. But that extra dollar is the thing that makes Papa John’s different, and we think the consumer can tell the difference.”

Papa John’s isn’t in a price race to the bottom either. Rather they are in a race to deliver taste and quality, hence their slogan “better ingredients, better pizza.” And the results speak for themselves as Papa John’s consistently finds itself atop the American Consumer Satisfaction Index among national pizza chains.

Sure Papa John’s may spend millions on advertising and deals with the NFL, however they never lose sight of the fact that it is all about making a good pizza. Papa John’s core values even read as such, “We must keep The Main Thing, The Main Thing. We will consistently deliver a traditional Papa John’s superior-quality pizza.” Good quality pizza continues to be their main thing and they keep laser like focus on it.

While their competitors may push to make their pizza as cheap as possible, Papa John’s realizes that advertising can’t cure bad customer service or a pizza that just doesn’t taste as good. By investing in a better pizza and in better people (P.A.P.A. – People Are Priority Always), Papa John’s wins with its finished product. This customer experience alone is more powerful than all their marketing campaigns combined.

Sell Like Groupon

With internet users receiving an average of over 100 emails a day, it is no wonder that so many people are adverse to email advertisements. Advertisements occupy a majority of the emails we receive on a daily basis and even the messages we opt in for and ask to be sent, start to seem like spam after awhile.

Groupon, a deal of the day website, has amazingly been able to flood subscriber inboxes on a daily basis with advertisements that do not come across as spam. When you receive a Groupon, you don't have a clue of what the offer is but the surprise and anticipation associated with the potential discount peeks your daily interest. The reason their offerings are so much more effective than traditional forms of advertisements is that Groupon is in the business of selling ideas. Today the idea might be a deal for a new restaurant that you've never tried while tomorrow it could be for a free additional thirty minutes with the purchase of a massage. Eventually though, one of those ideas is bound to catch your attention and that makes the entire experience worth it.

The idea of the Groupon approach works because over time, it eventually pairs the perfect idea for a particular customer. That idea creates an easy, low risk way for customers to test a business and find out if they are better than the alternatives. It is then up to the business to create a great experience. You have to get them in the door first to have this chance though.

Marketers and sales reps should take this same approach. Stop speaking to your clients about all the potential benefits of your services. Start offering them ideas instead. By advertising, you're hoping to create enough brand recognition that maybe they'll consider you but ads don't promote experiences, ideas do. An idea could be anything from a unique sample of your work to a case study for how you recently helped a client. Whatever your ideas may be though, frequently touching them with fresh new ideas is paramount to the Groupon sales approach.

Just like Groupon, if you offer prospects 50 different ideas, it only take one of those ideas to make them a customer. With this approach, prospects won't feel like you're always trying to sell them something that they might already have or that they don't perceive they need. Instead you are creating a buying atmosphere, one that gives them unique ideas for how they could potentially use your services. They will then perceive your message as hassle free but they won't shut you out from the opportunity to share ideas with them. In essence you are never rejected, only tabled for later when the idea finally arrives that connects them to your business.

Book Review - The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand
by Al Ries and Laura Ries

I recently stumbled upon this book written almost ten years ago and after finishing it, I was amazed at how well these "22 laws" still hold true for modern day business. The common sense approach that this book takes to branding speaks more to the overall strategy and mission of a company as to the just the marketing side of things. Where as many people might identify branding as just some element of business that marketing controls, no bigger per say than manufacturing is to operations, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding shows us that the strength of your brand will ultimately be the single most important element in the success of your business. Whether you are starting a new business or looking to improve upon an existing one, these 22 laws are a guide and resource to successfully (or unsuccessfully) building a company.

The 22 laws are as follows (this list would make for a great print out and should be hanging on your wall):
1. The Law of Expansion - The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope.
2. The Law of Contraction - A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.
3. The Law of Publicity - The birth of a brand is achieved with publicity, not advertising.
4. The Law of Advertising - Once born, a brand needs advertising to stay healthy.
5. The Law of the Word - A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the customer.
6. The Law of Credentials - The crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim to authenticity.
7. The Law of Quality - Quality is important, but brands are not built by quality alone.
8. The Law of the Category - A leading brand should promote the category, not the brand.
9. The Law of the Name - In the long run a brand is nothing more than a name.
10. The Law of Extensions - The easiest way to destroy a brand is to put its name on everything.
11. The Law of Fellowship - In order to build the category, a brand should welcome other brands.
12. The Law of the Generic - One of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name.
13. The Law of the Company - Brands are brands. Companies are companies. There is a difference.
14. The Law of Subbrands - What branding builds, subbranding can destroy.
15. The Law of Siblings - There is a time and a place to launch a second brand.
16. The Law of Shape - A brand's logotype should be designed to fit the eyes.  Both eyes.
17. The Law of Color - A brand should use a color that is the opposite of its major competitor's.
18. The Law of Borders - There are no barriers to global branding. A brand should know no borders.
19. The Law of Consistency - A brand is not built overnight. Success is measured in decades, no years.
20. The Law of Change - Brands can be changed, but only infrequently and only very carefully.
21. The Law of Mortality - No brand will live forever. Euthanasia is often the best solutions.
22. The Law of Singularity - The most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness.

These 22 laws are the stuff that great companies are made of. Want to know how strong your own company's brand is? Get this book and go through each chapter one by one and point out how well your brand follows each law. It might even open your eyes to strategy faults in your own organization but it will also give you a clear understanding of the bigger picture of public perception.

A brand is everything. It is who you are. And knowing who you are, what you stand for and how you can make that extremely clear and known to the rest of the world is critical to building a powerful brand.

Company Highlight - Chick-fil-A: Keeping it Simple with Chicken and Great Service

Photo from Flickr by _rockinfree

If you are a frequenter of fast food establishments, you've probably noticed an increased presence and growing popularity for the franchise Chick-fil-A.  Chick-fil-A, a chicken focused chain, has not only become a popular chicken restaurant, they have become the best drive through in America. QSR Magazine's annual Drive-Thru Performance Study has consistently, year after year, recognized Chick-fil-A as the best of all drive-thru's as they continue to exemplify outstanding customer service and a great product.

While Chick-fil-A does its fair share of charity work to get involved in local communities, they also do a great job of sticking to what made them great in the first place. The simple idea, to focus on making your product better, is a recipe for success that any business can follow.  Their goal is to make great tasting food, primarily chicken and to consistently demonstrate and improve upon their exemplary customer service. In fact, each and every year the company spends millions on improving their service instead of dumping it all on expensive ad campaigns. This commitment to incremental improvements shows in the form of amazing service that gets talked about and word of mouth advertising (free) will always give you the highest return on investment.

Chick-fil-A sticks to what they do by limiting their products to what they are good at. You don't see them frequently and drastically expanding their menu and adding new products that have nothing to do with who they are. Their menu is simple and the underlying focus has always been and continues to be chicken. They even go so far to prove this point that their entire advertising campaign is based on three simple words that perfectly define them - eat more chicken. By choosing these words they fight the intelligent fight and stay away from a chicken chain war with KFC. While this slogan might in fact send potential customers to a major rival in KFC, the amount of customers to be gained from beef focused chains far exceeds any increase in sales that could be gained from customers that are already big fans of chicken. Coke and Pepsi could learn something from this strategy as the number of cola drinks that are consumed each year continues to dwindle yet these two giants have been attacking each other for years instead of competing against coffee, energy drinks, beer or any other non-cola beverage. Chick-fil-A, on the other hand, wins if people simply choose chicken over beef.

Related Links:
http://www.bigisthenewsmall.com/2010/09/20/what-chick-fil-a-can-teach-us-about-success/

Book Review - Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
Written By: Winifred Gallagher

Rapt is an exploration of how attention plays such a crucial role in the quality of your life. The idea that what you choose to pay attention to shapes your life is the theme of the book as it explores the impact attention has on productivity, decisions, creativity, relationships, happiness and health. Rapt supports its claims with numerous insights, studies and data from both neuroscience and behavioral psychology. Simplistically the book is best summarized with the following quote found in the introduction:

"My experience is what I agree to attend to." - William James

The idea that attention holds so much power over your life should be encouraging because it means it is possible to shape your existence, outcome and daily mood. The human mind can only absorb and attend to so much and knowing how to control this is considered the secret to happiness for many.

The title of the book, Rapt, is appropriate as the term literally means to be completely absorbed, engrossed, fascinated and focused at any given moment. Rapt attention can make time seemingly fly by, create inner happiness and help you concentrate better in all aspects of your life. If you are achieving a rapt state of attention it most likely means that you're seeking out activities and a life that is full of your undivided attention instead of the reactive, unfocused and drifting way that many of us spend our time.

Rapt offers many antidotes to take control of your attention such as meditating and choosing the right activities. Through the power of meditating one should give complete focus to a single task for prolonged periods of time such as breathing. This practiced state of rapt attention increases your capacity for living the focused life. The wisdom to consistently choose enjoyable but challenging activities enables you to work your brain just enough to experience complete "flow" which the books considers the optimal human experience. Flow is better achieved when you choose activities that stretch your mental muscles such as when you are devoting time to a challenging hobby like learning guitar, playing sports, cooking a new recipe or devoting your time to a specific project at work. It is less likely to occur though when you space out while watching TV or when are trying to accomplish twenty things at once while multi-tasking. A consistent commitment to challenging and focused work and leisure produces a better daily experience and in-turn develops you into a more interesting person.

Rapt is a book for life and work. It preaches such timeless concepts as demonstrating self-control, focusing on positive thinking and making sure you give the people in your life the full, undivided attention they deserve. According to Rapt, this is the secret to a healthy and happy life and while we can't be happy all the time, the decisions we make on where to devote our attention and mental energy, goes a long way to shaping our overall life experience. As the book explains in discussing the connection that positive and productive rapt attention has with your overall health and well being, even the longevity of your life depends on the ability to control your attention.

The Art of Creating Goals You'll Stick To



Photo from Flickr by Neeta Lind

 Every year, right around the winter holidays, people all over the world set New Year's Day resolutions for themselves. The combination of an individual's deepest desires, hopes and dreams, forge into an idea, or a resolution and commitment to a particular goal. "This is the year that I'll finally..."

The beginning days of January start promisingly for most goals. Gym memberships go on the rise, new routines are formed and the search for the perfect job begins with great optimism. Then for most people, life gets in the way and very few goals make it past the Super Bowl in February.

Because the beginning of a year is such an epic event for us, the goals we set are usually huge. The bigger the goal, the more we celebrate the coming of the new year. After all, it is hard to get excited about small changes that aren't that noticeable. If you are overweight, you become so sick of being that way that you don't just want to lose weight, you want to be thin! What is the motivation in losing just ten pounds if you'll still be overweight?

A difficult part of changing habits is that often the payoff doesn't come quick enough and for those goals that are more accomplishment oriented (travel to Italy, sky diving, quit smoking, etc), the timing is never right. The problem with New Year resolutions that go unfulfilled however isn't that the goals are unrealistic, it's that very little thought was even put into the creation of the goal itself. Sure, in the back of your head you may have been telling yourself all year long that you need to accomplish this goal. Once the goal becomes a reality though, somewhere is the process, life gets busy and suddenly the goal doesn't seem that important anymore.

Most goals are set at impulsive moments in our lives. Whether it be a New Year's resolution, an unattractive glimpse at your body shape in the mirror or the moment your boss really ticks you off, a goal created in haste is certain to go to waste (no pun intended). If you aren't thinking clearly at the time the goal is created, eventually the rational part of your brain will catch up and say, "Hey, what exactly are we doing all this for again?" Impulsive goals give you an immediate high and aren't all that bad if they help you quickly get over pinned up anger. Once the impulse wears off though, and life returns to normal, it is amazing how insignificant that goal can become.

So how then do you create goals that you'll stick to? Goals created through hard work and by using your whole brain, not just that impulsive amygdala portion of it, are much more likely to stick. Goals that are set impulsively may be fun at the time, but you need to spend just as much time figuring out and reinforcing why it is that you are setting a certain goal for yourself as you will in actually working to achieve that goal. The more energy you put into the creation of the goal, the more loyal and connected you are to it. When you constantly feed yourself information about why the goal is important and how you'll accomplish it, the easier it becomes to trust yourself. If you stop trusting yourself though about why you set the goal in the first place, the resolution is doomed.

To put it in perspective on how your brain gets in the way of accomplishing your goals and why trusting yourself is such a critical component to achieving goals, imagine if you were in a plane about to sky dive. When you step to the edge, how could you not think about how insanely crazy it is to jump out of a plane thousands of feet in the air? You tell yourself that you don't have to do this, and you know what, you're right. So how do you actually come to the decision to make the leap?

There are risks to sky diving, ones that can get you killed, but you also choose to sky dive partly because of these risks. If there was no risk, it wouldn't appeal to thrill seekers. Before you sky dive though, you go through in depth training and learn everything you can about the real risks that are associated with it. This pre-goal training enables you to trust and believe that the knowledge and skill you have acquired to put yourself in this position, will mitigate the risks associated with the extreme situation. It also enables you to clearly, and not impulsively, decide if sky diving is really that important to you. The methodical process of learning about sky diving in a non-impulsive way, help to ensure that you won't lose your wits at jump time. As with sky diving or any other goal, the information that you acquire and the energy that you put into understanding the goal, are the key components that enable you to follow through to completion.

To see a goal to completion you need to set up reinforcements and constant reminders that help trigger the importance of your goal. If you don't set the right goal though, the one you truly want and clearly need to accomplish, all the reinforcements and reminders in the world won't prevent you from inevitably giving up on that goal. In fact, they'll be more apt to make you feel even worse about yourself.

The biggest goal setting irony is that the impulsive amygdala part of your brain that created the goal in the first place, is exactly the same part that makes you give up. This is why impulsive goals don't stick. They can't stick because you didn't create them, the reactive, fight or flight part of your brain did. Instead create goals systematically, methodically and creatively. Do the hard work necessary to create goals and go through a process. Knowledge, certainty and a clear understanding of the goal creates focus. Focus is achieved by using your whole brain and focus pushes you through because you've eliminated all fear and doubt.

Setting goals doesn't have to be as intense as sky diving. If you realistically want to achieve your goals though, spend some quality time thinking about why they are so important to you. Goals demand that you sacrifice your time and energy so figure out exactly what this commitment of energy will look like. Learn everything you can about the goal in advance, and spend the necessary time required connecting to the often difficult process that you'll have to go through to accomplish it. Having a clear picture of why your life will be better once this goal is achieved, makes it easier to push on through after the initial high has worn off.