Do Not Call List

It’s 3:30pm ET on Tuesday, January 6^th and I am sitting in the lobby of the Toronto Airport Fairfield Inn & Suites awaiting a ride to London with Alex Nicholson of Pro-Seminars. 

I am the opening speaker for Pro-Seminars in London at 8am Wednesday, then I have a few client calls after that I’m catching a flight home on Wednesday at 3:30pm ET.

This is a picture of an Inukshuk from a Prestige Glass advertisement from the WestJet UP! in-flight magazine that I was glancing through on my flight to Toronto on Sunday.

 “You are on the right path” is one of the traditional meanings of the Inukshuk.

If one has written values, vision, business plan, 90 day goals and actions they will be on the right path and be awake to the positive messages and signs at every turn … or not.

I do my best to stay awake at all times, especially when I am travelling because one can get hooked into negativity.

I stay awake by putting positive energy into meditation, journaling and work my plan on things that include; articles, blogs, client communications and product development.

Falling asleep could easily trip me up into getting focused on little negatives triggered by the inevitable mishaps that happen along the way;

• My flight from Calgary to Toronto was 45 minutes late arriving in Toronto at 10:45 ET
• I had a restless night’s sleep on Sunday night because I was feeling nauseous and my hotel room was cold
• The hotel chef was away so the hotel restaurant was closed and the nearest restaurant was a half a click away
• My suit pants fell off the hanger and were lying at the bottom of the closet in a ball for hours and they looked like a dog’s breakfast when it came time for me to get dressed to go and speak
• My portable printer died

Have you had enough yet? 

I’ve offered these points to demonstrate that there will be challenges along the way … the solution is to have a huge vision so that these little insignificant distractions don’t pull you into the dark side.

When you have vision you can expect to experience the results that we have experienced in the first two working days of 2009;

• Speaking presentation booked for April 2 for Advocis South East BC in Trail, BC
• New client e-mailed to confirm their commitment to start working with us
• Speaking presentation booked for March 10 for Financial Managment BC in Vancouver, BC
• Pro-Seminars’ Toronto speaking presentation successfully completed that included the following results; e-newsletter subscribers, book requests, speaking leads, requests to have a conversation about being a client and book sales!  All of these items are components that fill our marketing funnel.

A full marketing funnel equals never, never, never, never doing a cold call again.

Cold calling … now that is something for both you and the person on the other end of the phone to complain about!