I haven’t followed Steve as a fan. Maybe because I am not a hard core techie guy. And why would I write a tribute about him is because I know that his principles in life can be used by anybody to achieve excellence and greatness in their own fields. It is when I read about his speech in front of the graduates of Stanford University in 2005 that I began to gain consciousness on this incredible man. His words moved me and influence my way of thinking in dealing with life. I never so realized how fearful I was in life when I first bump into his words of wisdom which I am sure brought those students a powerful tool in face their next stage in life. I was wondering if majority of those students will come to see Jobs in his funeral for the last time. Because I am sure I will if I’m in their shoes that time.

In my short knowledge about Steve – a good friend and industry rival of Microsoft founder, Bill Gates – I was able to gather some powerful leadership lessons that will certainly be useful to any entrepreneurs as well as common people. And here they are:

EXCELLENCE: “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

SERVICE: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”

CONTRIBUTION: “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

PASSION: “I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over… the only way to do great work is to love what you do…”

OPTIMISM: “… it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”

PERSISTENCE: “If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

EXPANSION: “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.”

MENTOR: “My job is not to be easy on people. My jobs is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.”

LEARNER: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Click here for more brilliant Steve Job quotes.

What’s great in this business is that, you don’t have to convince people. In fact, you can withdraw the offer if you feel that it’s not their time yet.

I work as a manager in an I.T. industry and part of my job is to pre-qualify job applicants for a vacant position. I interview people and make assessment afterwards. And we pick someone who can help us move forward in our company. The same thing goes in looking for business partners in the network marketing industry.

Based on my experience in the sifting process, here are why network marketing business may not be for everybody.

Some people don’t have big dreams.

Some people may start without clear goals, but their minds shift as you introduce possibilities to them. And that’s cool.

But there are those who doesn’t see or refuse to see anything bigger. Someone told me last time, “.. but I can do something else to make money.”  I replied, “True. Actually you don’t have to do this. If you just want an extra $100, you can go buy and sell other stuffs instead.”

Network marketing is for ambitious people. It is for someone who dreams about having more money and more time for the things they love to do. One does not need to get involved if he wants only a few extra bucks per month.

Some people refuse to grow.

One funny thing about home-based business is that, there are people who wants success and yet they have this notion of home-based business as something like “browse and click” and the cash will pour in. Just because it is home-based, it doesn’t mean that things should be easy.

These are people who want easy money, or worse, wants something for nothing. They don’t want to learn because they want results right away. In fact the solution for this is to work and learn right away. But they want to skip this part. And the irony is that, each moment they attempt to skip the work, the longer it takes for them to succeed.

Promise outright support to people. Don’t promise easy things, or else you will create a bunch of spoiled brats.

Cluttered people are not serious enough.

These are people who have lots of priorities, or people who doesn’t know what their priorities are. Priorities are good if they are in line with what you want to create for your future. If you want financial freedom, put money making activities on top priority.

They often lead to analysis-paralysis. They love making justifications for not taking action. They want to please everybody and so they end up stuck. They refuse to pay the price of success.

In short, complicated. Having a simple mind is hard, but that’s the kind of mindset that will give focus.

Lack of initiative to solve problems or ask for help. 

There are people who have blocks in starting the business. Some would not be stopped though, because they know they can find answers and solutions.

While others will just stare at me blankly and wait as if I am the one who should give the answer. I could but that won’t make a difference. Problem solving is a normal day-to-day activity in business. Having the lack of initiative to find ways to start the business is just laziness and resignation in action.

The exemption though are people who are open to suggestions and will gladly to be assisted. You can easily identify these people compared to the lazy ones.

Some people are just plain negative.

A negative attitude will generally not work in any other field. So don’t bother having someone in your group that will give you headaches along the way. Let them come back to you, when they already did something about their outlook in life. My mentor would always remind me: “Don’t invite unpleasant people.”

In conclusion:

Again, you don’t have to convince people. Practice your professionalism by knowing when to stop pursuing your friend. You may let them understand that where they are right now might not work in your business, and that you will remain friends and you will be waiting for them until they are ready.

The Ageloc business in Argentina was launched last month, June 2011. Which means if you are living in Argentina, you can make money out of the Ageloc trend. If you are not from that country, you may open your market there and make transactions – if you are already a registered distributor.

What is Ageloc again?

Health supplements was first started with vitamins and minerals. Then, antioxidants came. And now, the latest in the industry  is currently giving a new approach to health and anti-aging – that is epigenetics!

Ageloc is a technology based on epigenetics which targets the ultimate sources of aging to preserve once youthful look and vitality.

Why do business in Argentina?

• Latin America is projected to have a robust recovery from global recession.
• Skin care industry will have a huge growth in Latin America.
• Like Brazil and Mexico, Argentina will become a primary market for the industry.
• Argentina was ranked as #17 of Direct Selling Billion Dollar Market.
• Argentina has 731,000 sales people.

For those of you who wants to do Ageloc business in Argentina, get in touch with me. I will send to you the procedures in PDF format.

See reference here.

It’s hard to succeed if you have something to lean on all the time. And the worst thing that you can lean on are your dramas, alibis, reasons – in short your excuses.

Excuses makes someone justified (or so it appears to be like it). Justified or not – no one cares. In fact one has to only care about whether he is getting the life he wants or not. Justification will not help on this part.

Excuses only tells one’s capability of taking responsibility. And if you want to create the life that you want, you must understand that you are 100% responsible.

Majority of the people are fond of making excuses. That’s why most of them are living a life of mediocrity. Excellence does not welcome excuses.

How to break the habit of making excuses?

• Jot down commitments and follow through.
• When you commit mistakes, don’t justify. Just tell the truth.
• Be aware of the words that precede  “because”. These are your excuses.
• Don’t punish yourself when you catch yourself making excuses.
• Always take the extra mile. Sometimes your best is not enough.
• Learn from mistakes.
• Make use of things and people around you to assist you in fulfilling your commitments.

The habit of making excuses can’t be that easy to eliminate, but once you get to break the habit and become more responsible, you will develop high integrity to yourself which is an essential part for success.

See previous Lead Global Bootcamp here.

And somehow, on the last day, we just decided to have our last lunch in Shakey’s. Probably we just missed the familiar ambiance.

I think one thing that’s different in this Shakey’s branch is the spot where some 20 or so framed vintage newsprints about the company were hanged on the wall for display. I am quite fascinated about vintage collections. And so, after my meal I went to quickly read all of the prints. And there’s one frame that got my attention. It is a newspaper ad that says “at Shakey’s we serve fun (also pizza).”

There are several things that came into my mind:

• Customer satisfaction and service first.
• Experience is more valuable than the product itself.
• Make people feel good about themselves visiting your place, trying your products on.
• Fun as a branding.

Wow! What if every company or business will serve fun on top of their main craft?

We normally squeeze in some training sessions with the masters of the industry along with the fun time. Which is great, so people get to learn while enjoying the beach holiday.

One of the challenges asked by the leaders is to sell Sunright sunblock in a period of time.  Now, we’re in Boracay to sell sunblocks, I thought.

This is a test for being an entrepreneur though. I remembered the challenge in Donald Trump’s The Apprentice (Season 1) reality show, where the contestants were tasked to sell lemonades in the streets of New York. Others happily accepted the challenge, while others just didn’t get the point of doing so.

Back in the island, we were divided into several groups, and each group should be able to sell at least 2 tubes of sunblocks. The first thing that came into our mind is to ask everyone we meet along the way if they need sunblocks at that moment. Man, this is hardcore selling! This is fun!.

Personally, I wasn’t able to sell one. But a few good friends were able to move the product.  Here are the selling methods that we learned from the whole activity.

• Sell from someone you know. Remember, trust is a must.
• Sell from a friend of someone you know.
• Make friends first. Spend time to relate and connect, before you offer the product.
• Put in some creativity. Others offered a “sunblock-ing” service for any amount, until the whole tube was consumed.

I asked someone who was able sold one tube, what did she do to make someone buy? She said, I kept on asking and maybe the right one came along after doing a lot of asking. Ah yes, persistence.  Persistence which is best accompanied with fun.

Social Media Marketing is meant to make business expansions and with the advantage of doing it anywhere you want, anytime you want, and even marketing your business without you doing it 24 hours a day, (and it will only cost you a fraction of the amount you invest in traditional marketing). And that was made possible because of the Internet.

It can be used for all types businesses, but not all businesses can make use of its full capability.

For instance, you have a food cart business and you want to make use of social media marketing tool. The tool can only give you as much customer as you have within a specific perimeter. If someone from another city wants to order a burger sandwich, you just can’t have it wrapped and make the delivery.

What I mean is, if the only opportunity for you to expand that food cart business is to have it available on that other location. In that case, you have to invest on additional resources.

So how do you spot a best business for social media marketing? Here’s your checklist:

• Is it a global business?
• Transactions can be done online
• It is not necessarily attached to one location.
• 24 hour operational (and of course, even without you guarding it sleeplessly)

So what kind of business do you  think is this?

How about product distribution services? Think like Amazon.com. Can you market someone else’s products and let the manufacturer ship the orders to your clients?

All leaders can naturally sell, and almost without any effort. Not all salespeople are leaders though. In fact in our team, I don’t know of any person who became successful whose professional background is into sales. If there’s any, there’s probably only a few. That’s because not all salesman are entrepreneurs.

I’m writing this post because, these past few days, I’ve met a good number of people who doesn’t want to do network marketing business because they don’t want to sell products.

Selling products is only part of the whole, and the business is much, much bigger than that. I know a 7-figure income earner who can hardly remember if he had sold a single product during his entire network marketing career.

So here are a few distinctions:

• Leading will give you leverage income. Selling will give you active income.
• Leading will expand your business fast. Selling will exhaust you working on your own.
• Leaders attracts people. Salespeople look for people.
• Leaders influence people. Salespeople convince people.

So, if you are still have a mental picture of you selling products door-to-door, chasing people, and convincing them to buy your stuffs, you are surely thinking small time. And if you want a successful network marketing business, think bigger than that – lead!

Here’s one cool iPhone apps that can predict how you will look like when you get old. Perhaps this could be one of the best iPhone apps in 2011.

This application is also available for iPad, iTouch, and Android phones.

Here’s how you can get this free iPhone app.

For iPhone, iPad, and iTouch

• From your device, go to App Store and search for AgeLoc
• Select on AgeLoc Me, and click Free. Then click Install.
• Log in your Apple ID.

Or,

Enjoy and share to friends!

Last weekend, we watched Manny Pacquiao’s fight against Shane Mosley. One of the much anticipated events worldwide in 2011.

I have waited for Manny’s trigger, and it came on the 10th round.

Before that, the fight went interesting until the 3rd round when Pacquiao’s left fist caught Mosley’s face. His opponent was pinned down the canvass for the first time in his whole boxing career. He sat there for some time and realized that the champ is real.

After that, the fight went bland. Nothing’s happening. Mosley has to avoid Pacquiao. He just can’t  attack him, because he knew that the counter is gonna be hard to bear, and he could fall the second time and could be his last. He can’t afford that. Champions like Mosley, knows when to fight and when not to. The duel with Pacquiao is one of those that can’t be won, at least in that moment.

The rounds went on with no much action. Something has to happen. Something has to pull the trigger.

Then the 10th round came. Pacquiao was too close to Mosley, and Mosley has to push him back. He has to avoid the danger zone. I believe it wasn’t intentional, he just have to do it, otherwise Pacquiao will surely knock him down in a split second. The push brought the pound-for-pound king on his knees.

No, that wasn’t the trigger. Instead, it was the referee’s decision that counted the incident as valid. That put Pacman in humiliation. I thought, that was the trigger.

That was the power trigger that brings a good fight for Pacman, and brings value to people who paid a good amount to watch him live. The trigger that made him the champion, not only in the ring, but in his life as a whole. This is how real champions think - losing is not an option. This is being competitive.

At long last, the fight was on fire again.

So, what’s your power trigger? What keeps you alive and fighting?