Repeating the successes of the past, preserving tradition, doing things as they are “supposed” to be done, will- at best – produce results like those had before.  Except that in this new future – our present – those results can’t possibly be as good, as productive, or as powerful as they once were.  And probably not as much fun, either.

Unreasonable success requires unreasonable approaches to the future.Breakthroughs needn’t happen by chance. You can create them at will.Breakthroughs are great leaps forward, and while they can happen by accident, they can also happen by design.

Here are principles of Being Unreasonable

11. Don’t base your life on what’s likely. Base it on what you dream about

Take the possible further. Chart the course of your life not on what you think probable, not on what you think possible, but on that about which you think fantastic.  The biggest breakthroughs and biggest successes come from dreamers.  (Caveatfanaticus {dreamer beware}: It will still you take all the same work to get there – dreams just don’t yield results without action.)

12. Expect the best

Expect the best from those around you. Expect them to be successful. Count on it. Plan for it. Budget for it. Expecting the best gives you the highest likelihood of getting whatever IT is.  Start with the best case scenario and figure out how insure it. By the way, expecting the worst has a similar, but opposite, effect.

13. Don’t think, “Can I accomplish it?” Think, “How can I get this done?”

If it is worth doing, and you have strong reasons for doing it, you’ll find a way. Stop worrying if it is possible. Trust me, it is. Focus your deepest mind on how to make it happen.  Remember, the best answer to “How…?” is “Yes.”

14. Back yourself into a corner, so the only place you can go is forward

Warrior-sage Sun Tzu wrote that nothing is as dangerous as an enemy backed into a corner.  They will fight to the death for the have nowhere else to run.  Don’t think about “enemies,” use this strategy on yourself.

15. Cut your timelines in half. You’ll do better work

Not only does work expand to fill the time available, so do our schedules, creating a viscous and every-expanding circle. We need pressure to accomplish great things. Shorten your timeframes, cut them in half. Then tell your friends. Your work may not be any better, but you’ll get it done in less time.

16. Ask people for a lot. They just may give you what you need

Shrinking violets rarely accomplish anything, and asking for what you want will often get it for you.  People like to serve. People like to accomplish. People like to win against great odds. Why not ask them for everything.

17. You don’t have to when someone says you should

People say, “you should” when what they really mean is, “In the past, most people I have known have done thus-and-so.”  Ask, “Why should I?” whenever the conversation turns to should’s and shouldn’ts.  Should is the road to mediocrity.  “Why should I”, is the first step towards majesty.

18. If you’re not scared, you’re not doing anything worthy

ll great ventures things in life contain elements of profound risk, and the promise of failure as well as success.  Courage isn’t acting without fear, it is being afraid, and acting anyway.  If you are not at least a little afraid, you are probably not doing anything worthy of the name great. Unreasonable people are often afraid.  So what, just be sure you are afraid of the right thing.

19. Don’t worry about getting it just right

Perfection prevents progress. New ideas must be tested against human beings. If you wait until you get it perfect, it may be too late. It may be never. Think functionality and workability. Experiment in the chaos of the real world, and fix the problems that arise later.

20. Freedom comes from responsibility

Be fully responsible for your actions and the effects they produce. Most people look for outside causes. Unreasonably lay claim to every miracle and debacle within your sphere of influence, which includes, by the way, everything. Make it all yours, for that’s the only way to exert dominion over your world and gain freedom.

I’d unreasonably like to hear what you think.  Take a minute and put your comments below.

If you missed the first 10 ideas read them here.

Hey, you know what? All hoopla aside, I like the LOA. And why not? It’s a cool idea, and if the choice is between focusing my mind on things I want versus focusing on things I don’t want, I’d rather spend my mental energy on things I want.

But here’s the question: Is “just” thinking, and emoting, and visualizing, and meditating, and yes, praying, about things I want going to bring them into my life?

LOA gurus say yes and offer proof like a garage full of fast cars, a big house, weight loss…

I don’t believe it.

If all you do is think, emote, visualize, meditate and pray, you may feel better, but all by themselves, those things aren’t going to make your house bigger or your cars faster.  And if you think about being thin, and keep eating, well, as they say, the proof IS in the pudding…

If it did work, everyone reading The Secret would be rich. And while a few are, most are not.

But here’s what does happen…

When you sharply focus your internal self on what you want as directed by the LOA, you are going to see many subtle things you might otherwise have missed. You’ll also see some obvious things your previous blinders kept from view.

It’s also going to help you stop sabotaging yourself in whatever ways you’ve spent a lifetime mastering. (Everyone’s an expert at their own version of this.)

It may even make you more “attractive” to people who can help you, because you’ve become a more positive, pleasant, less whiny person to be around, and perhaps more fun, besides.

In all these ways, practicing the law of attraction can make a huge difference.

But here’s one more very important point…

You see, in the physical world, where most of us live, if you want something to happen, you’ve got to move things around. Whether it’s atoms or bits, things still have to move around.  And that takes action.

The good news is that your LOA-driven focus can to cause you to DO THINGS, large and small, that you otherwise might have delayed, or blown off entirely, or done badly, which you will now do well. In other words, your LOA mindset can cause you to TAKE ACTION. And not only any action, but the right action. FOCUSED ACTION.

Is there something spiritual at work here? I can’t say, I’m not an expert. But I can tell you this: If you don’t have that last bit – the part about taking focused action?  Not much is going to happen.

But if you consistently take Focused Action, doing the right things, day in and day out, you can make miracles happen.

So I’ve a proposal.  The Law of Attraction is fine, but if you want really want to heat up your business and your life, apply the Law of Focused Action.

Be Unreasonable.  Sharpen your mental focus using LOA.  Then put the Law of Focused Action to work. Get busy with the things that will make a difference. Now.

P.S.  My apologies to anyone else who’s written recently about any similar subject.  When a lot of great minds think alike, that’s the LOA in action. Right?

Put the Law of Focused Action to work and add your comments below. 

You will not be struck down if you break the rules. (You may be fired, or you might lose market share.) But it is worthwhile to weigh the risk of breaking a rule against the potential payoff.  And definitely don’t worry about “getting in trouble” if you’re sure that your rule breaking will help deliver the goods. (See the discussion of permission.)

And you don’t have to be “the best” to make up your own rules, although it does help. A certain amount of experience and insight is attributed to those who are “the best,” and if you are considered “the best,” it gives you a great deal of credibility and insulates you from backlash.  And, of course, making up your own rules may help you to be the best.

Rule breakers are not lawbreakers. (Not necessarily, anyway.) Know the difference. If you find that breaking the rules will in fact break the law, and you still plan to break that rules,  make sure you are doing it for a very good reason. Almost all of the time–unless you are deliberately setting an example or fighting for social change–it would be better to find another way.

Break rules when your new approach will make you more effective, or when the old rule is simply not effective at all. Otherwise, why are you breaking the rule?

Leaders are typically more comfortable with breaking rules than other people, that’s probably a big chunk of what makes them leaders. If you have people working for you, encourage them to question rules that aren’t your (business’s) goals. This could help turn them into leaders all by itself.

Knowledge doesn’t make something right. There’s an old saw that if you don’t know that there is a rule, you don’t know enough to break it. This is nonsense and has nothing to do with rule breaking. Understand the situation you are in. Figure out why things aren’t working and base your next actions on what will work. Of course it helps to understand the current environment, and you may try to avoid wanton rule breaking just for its own sake. But in the end, if there’s a rule in place and you inadvertently break it, see the next rule.

“It is easier to apologize later than to ask for permission,” said Admiral Grace Hopper, the inventor of COBOL. This woman broke so many rules it would make your head spin. If you ask for permission first, are refused and do it anyway, you’re really in trouble. So it’s better not to ask. If you’re certain that you’re right, go ahead and do it. You’ll find out more about the penalties later anyway.

The rules for who should and should not break the rules are as follows: novices do not know the rules; amateurs know the rules, but have trouble following them; pros know the rules and can begin to bend them as necessary; and geniuses, who know the rules, break them, create new rules, and break those as well. Each of these people can break the rules as necessary. Even novices are allowed to break the rules, as they may have radically effective propositions based on their innocence. –Anonymous

Creativity does not have to result in rule breaking. There are all sorts of ways to improve your results inside of the current rules, especially when those rules “make sense” and are working well. But most of the time, creativity does result in rule stretching.

And just because you break the rules doesn’t mean you’re a genius or even an innovator. Rule breaking may produce no valuable results whatsoever. On the other hand, breakthroughs never happen without rule breaking. It’s part of the definition.

1. Marketing plans and not aligned with business goals.   For instance, say you have a goals to grow top-line revenues by 50%. (Only 50%?  Well, it is a recession.)  In Formula 5 terms, that would mean a three-part combination of strategies to improve pricing and margins, monetization of each customer, and of course, lead generation.   Most business owners never think this way. They never try to figure out what it will take to reach that 50%, in action-oriented terms.

Work backwards from the goal. Ask the question, what will it take?  Which parts of the business would be most amenable to improvement?  Once you figure that out you can take the next step.

What can you add to your value proposition to justify a price increase – and how much could you add?  What can you sell to your existing (and very happy) customers?  Do you have that product or service? If not, what’s the plan to create it?  What about new leads?  Can you amp up your existing programs, or do you need to create new channels?

Create goals for each of these three improvement programs, with detailed action steps.  Get busy meeting the business goals.

2) Not measuring the right things to reach those goals.  Most business owners don’t keep good track of their marketing activities so they have no idea what’s what.  Online marketers tend to be better, but not that much.  As the old saying goes, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.  If you don’t keep careful track of things, you are unable to take the right actions, and you never know if you’re on or off course.  And if all you’re looking at is number of new leads and conversion rate – well, that’s not bad, but it is just not enough.

Understand your  Customer lifetime profits,  average customer life, purchase frequency, and average transaction size.  Add to that your conversion rates and cost of customer acquisition by marketing channel, and you know everything necessary to drive the business results.  Without every one… it’s sort of like driving your car without a gas gauge.  Would you do that?

3) Not knowing the cost of your goals, and not spending to reach them.  This is the one almost every small business owner makes, and many large ones as well.  Want to grow your business by 50%?  Have you bothered to figure out that you need to advance $100,000 on lead generation and spend another $100k on product development and $50k on customer service to reach that goal?  Do you have the cash or credit to do this?  Most people never bother to figure this out which results in many business growth plans stopping short. And failure to execute always leads to failure.

Address each of these mistakes and you have a much higher chance of reaching your growth goals.

“In life, there is no such obligation to move. If you can’t find a useful plan, you can watch television, stick with business as usual, and believe that no news is good news. Human beings are brilliantly creative at finding ways to pass time in unconstructive ways. At these times, the true strategist shines by finding the means to make progress, to strengthen his position and prepare for the inevitable conflict. And conflict, we cannot forget, is inevitable.”

Think about these phases in your own business, where you are sitting around, waiting for something else to happen. Could they be used to strategic advantage?

Then, “What are some of the ways that can happen?” This will give you the high order possible strategies.

Next, validate that this is, in some way, possible. Use internal and external market research.

Your research opens up the Gap Analysis, and starts to answer the question, What is needed to get THERE?

Consider, “How different is that from WHERE YOU ARE NOW?” and “What are the ways to close the gaps?”

Prioritize which gaps are most important AND most closable AND Have the biggest payoff.

Now: DO THOSE THINGS FIRST

The decks are finally clear. Here are four ways to make a breakthrough:

1. Figure out what’s working and find a way to do it much more, or much better.
2. Figure out what’s not working and fix it.
3. Figure out something from a different discipline and apply it to your own GAP
4. Invent something new, completely of whole cloth.

In any case, I was reading Jerry West writing about… what else, blogs…

He referenced something that I feel should be pasted backwards on my forehead so that I can see it every time I look in a mirror. It’s an old Chinese proverb:

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The next best time is today.”

I’m now practicing what I call ‘unreasonable time management.” This means my goal is to only do things that matter, and which contribute, and not doing anything that doesn’t bring me closer, in a measurable way, to reaching my goals.  I’m dropping all obligations, all “shoulds,” and even all things that I promised to do, but simply do not make sense.  Each day I’m reviewing my time commitments and making new decisions. 

Also, I’m holding to the discipline of only doing those things which are on my calendar.  Which means that if I want to get something done, I have to schedule it.  What’s nice about this approach is that all things have to get scheduled, and as they get scheduled, nothing (or at least fewer and fewer things) are happening by either chance or inertia.   I’m not perfect at this, but I’m getting better.

They say that time is money.  I’m not sure I agree, but it does seem that they are freely exchangeable.  Right now I’m trading in both directions.  Sometimes it’s my time for money, other times, it’s my money for time.  Either direction involves a choice. 

I’ve been wracking my brain to find a new one, but there’s no way around it.  Although there are hundreds of specific approaches, when you distill them all down, there are only three ways to expand a business.  Three main ways, and only three.  What are they?

1. Sell more to your existing customers
2. Find more new customers
3. Merge or acquire your competitors

You might ask, “What’s the point of talking about three when there are ‘hundreds of specific approaches’?”  That’s a reasonable question – it’s easy to think consolidating them obscures the opportunity.  But in fact, it’s just the opposite.

You see, most people don’t think much — about anything — and when they do they don’t never pay attention to how they’re thinking. So they never develop tools for how to do it.  Generalization is one of those tools. Generalization allows you to crunch (maybe it’s the opposite of crunching) a whole bunch of information into a few manageable pieces you can more easily manipulate in your mind.

That’s what we’ve just done here. Now that you realize there are only three ways to grow a business – whether you are measuring growth by sales, or cash flow, or profits, or market share, or number of customers… whatever, you can examine each of these three more carefully and see how they apply to your business.

And that’s what you should do next.  At least, that’s what I tell all my high-paying clients!

Counting Time Is Not So Important As Making Time Count.

I had to re-read it a few times to be sure, but I find it profound. Perhaps not the first part, but Making Time Count. That’s my new time management mantra.  Make sure that the time I have available, whether it’s 4 hours a week or 60,  is well used and never squandered.

There are people who argue that “time is not money” but I actually think it is at the very least, freely exchangeable. Time can definitely be converted into money (if your marketing systems are any good) and money can – within limits – be converted into time.

Make it count.