Un-Masterminding, Unlearning and Trusting in Yourself — BYB001

All new show! Welcome to the first season of the Bangin’ Your Business Show.

Today we have:

• Kickoff and intro!
• Answering a reader question about “careers in nutrition” (with answers you might not expect)
• All about the new show (format, frequency, length, purpose)
• What was undone, unlearned, and un-masterminded in 2014 and how it grew our business
• Why trusting your gut can be just the life-exploding ticket you’re looking for
• In the Productivity Tool segment, my one and only place for managing crazy numbers of lists
• What’s on tap for next week’s show
• And a whole lot more

Have a listen here:

Show notes and recommended resources below. Be sure to tune in next week where we’ll talk about:

• The magical power of blueberries and gravity
• What makes a business really “bangin'”
• I’m all over Kumar’s question about negotiating remote consulting agreements
• And a few other goodies thrown in as well

See you next week! (Detailed show notes below.)

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Notes about show notes: These notes are rough. I’m including them in the first few episodes as a test. Essentially, these are the rough liner notes I use myself when planning and recording show—and cleaned up a bit. (But not too much.)

They are not word-for-word, but pretty darn close. (About 25%.) There are definitely a few subtle differences, so you’ll want to listen to the show all the same.

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A note about show notes…

During the Bangin’ Your Business launch festivities, I’m including a “semi-transcript” of each show. The notes are detailed and have about 75% fidelity with the audio content.

However, there are content, rhythm and flow differences between the show and its notes. They are not a word-for-word match: but very close. The notes are intended as more or less as full-length feature articles.

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Show Notes

Ever get advice that sounded good at the time, but realized later that “hey! that took me off course!” Ever wish you’d just listened to yourself and taken your own advice? Trusted your gut?

I made the mistake of not trusting my gut recently. BIG Mistake. We’ll talk about how my mistake can help YOUR business.

In the Bangin’ your questions segment, Jamie asks about how to roll with a career in nutrition.

Got crazy #’s of lists you need to keep straight? I have just the ticket in today’s productivity segment.

In the productivity tool segment, I’ll share what’s been keeping all my crazy lists together lately.

Stick around, we have a LOT to catch up on as we FIRE UP a new season of Bangin’ Your Business!

Show Introduction

Welcome to the all-new “Bangin’ Your Business” show. Each week I share insight and perspective — sprinkled with a heavy dose of real-world “been there done that” on topics of business, consulting, enterprise IT, managing clients and more. Plus a lot of “SEO-Unfriendly” stuff you won’t find covered on many blogs—but it’s stuff you just gotta know.

Who the heck am I? My name is Corbin Links and I’m 26+ year veteran of the identity access management (IAM / IDM / SSO, etc.) & enterprise IT world, plus a nutritionist, author, international business consultant, and “other duties as required.”

I’ve worked with the smallest businesses with just the spark of an idea through to the largest domestic and international governments, fortune 100’s, and financial institutions.

Each week I share tips and strategies to help you stay healthy and highly productive in business IT, or whatever your specialty is. I believe that strong minds, healthy bodies and focused commitment = super-charged business. And good business is good for the world! Great health can == greater business.

Such is my view anyway, and we’ll explore that further on each episode. Plus, I’ll cover some of the difficult and SEO-unfriendly topics that you MUST know, but others won’t tell you ’cause it’s not so SEO friendly for the blog. Know what I mean?

What’s Been Happening

Hey, episode 1 is in full swing. I should probably do a deeper dive intro, what do you say?

What’s in a name?

My wife and business partner and I conceived the concept while eating an Irish restaurant. The place featured this dish you’ve probably heard of called “bangers and mash”. I’d heard of it too, but never really followed it up. Turns out, it’s related to these sausages made in the WWII time period. There was so little meat content due to rationing, they were likely to just explode as not when cooked

We kind of looked at each other and thought: hey, what about doing this with our business? You know, making it “explode” — but in a good way, as opposed to “imploding”, which we’ll discuss in another episode.

Anyway, we’ve been toying with the idea for months, and finally turned it into the Bangin’ Your Business Show.

For me, a “Bangin’ business” means:

• It’s success-driven and unapologetic.
• It’s built to compound and compound and compound (like bank interest used to do…) until it finally explodes!
• It has the connotation of explosion, blowing up (but in a good way).
• It tunes in and captures this whole picture of “taking it up a notch—or 1000 notches!”

I’ll dive into some other bangin’ business examples as the show goes on.

As for me? Well, professionally I do three things:

1. Help large organizations simplify the complex and automate everything possible.
2. Help other consultants and professionals ratchet their businesses as high as they want to take them.
3. And, of course, “other duties as required.”

Here’s a quick bio snapshot:

Ultra-brief bio of your show host…

What can I bring to the table?

My qualifications include over 26 years in business IT (and a few years prior in contract security management), hundreds of projects, a nice solid consulting business, lots of articles and more. Did I mention a nutrition background and certification? Yep. I’m a huge believer that physical health and mental clarity lead to stratospheric heights in business or any of your endeavors.

I’ve been called a lot of things in my time (MOST of them good…), but one of my favorites is “the consultant’s consultant”. I’m the partner in an international business IT consulting firm Links Business Group LLC.

Over the years I’ve worked literally hundreds of projects with many of the world’s most respected companies, including Microsoft, Cisco, Disney, and the U.S. Government for starters. When other consultants ask for technical, career, health (I’m a certified nutritionist as well), and money / project / client advice, I do the best I can. This show is the result.

My experiences doing hundreds of projects, losing over 80 pounds and keeping them off, beating acid reflux disease, billing lots of hours and client projects without ever getting sick all tarted generating questions. Lots of questions. so this show is my attempt to answer them the best I can.

Maybe you’ve heard my stuff before? Like The Corbin Links Show, or BIG Results Consulting? Maybe you’re going old school and you used to listen to my “Identity Management Success Podcast”? If so, WELCOME back! Hope this new show and format exceeds your expectations and yelps you do more, bill more, and make more.

If you’re new? Welcome! Come share the bangin’ business journey with us.

Plans for the show going forward

• Weekly, released each Wednesday morning, US Eastern Standard Tie.
• Length is around 45minutes….(ish)…
• The format will be similar to today’s episode, at least for the first few.
• And hey – we’ll mix it up as things go!

Bangin’ Your Questions (Q & A Segment)

This week’s question comes from Jamie. She wrote in asking about “how to kick off a career in nutrition.”

OK Jamie: big question here and only partially on topic, but we cover a lot of health and nutrition. So, why not tackle your question on the show?

Without a bit more context or knowing you personally, I think what you’re asking is “where do I start my nutritional journey”. It’s a vast topic and there are literally thousands (millions?) of differing and often completely counter opinions out there. When I started my journey over 13 years ago, there was a lot less info than there is now, but was just as hard. I read over 15 diet books in my first year!

Here’s my quick take:

1. Start with yourself. Master the game and reach whatever goals you’re after. Want to lose 15–20–100 pounds? Do that. Document the process.
2. Know what you want out of it. For me, my goal was to drop two decades off my appearance and waistline. But along the way, I developed a burning desire to help others by sharing my story and what I’d learned. (Such as with this podcast.) Maybe you want to be a better / healthier you. Maybe you want to coach others in their journeys of losing weight, or battling tough health issues. Maybe you want to work with hospitals and plan meals and programs for patients? Maybe you don’t want to have clients or patients at all, and just create an amazing book, website, or information product? Whatever your goals, that will drive your decision.
3. Understand the different ways and methods of eating, exercising, and living. There are a bunch of them! Some you’ll agree with and they’ll jibe with your own experiences. Others won’t. That’s ok—EVERYONE is different! EVERYONE is different! I could repeat that a thousand times, it’s just THAT important.
4. Find a school, class, or program. For people starting out fresh, I recommend visiting Body Mind Nutrition’s website. They have many different classes and tracks to choose from. (I have NO business interest with them, I just have found many of their nutritional materials to be sound and foundational.) Don’t stop there of course, your nutritional journey is never-ending.
5. Last, a small plug for my book How to Up Your Health Game in 30 Days or Less. I speak all day long on the principles covered in this book. It’s foundational, easy to read, and will give you a *huge * jumpstart on your health and nutrition journey.

Thanks for the question Jamie!

Do you have a question you’d like answered on an upcoming episode of The Bangin’ Your Business Show?? Just reach out via the contact form. Due to the huge volume of mail, I don’t guarantee a direct mail reply, but always make every effort to answer your questions on this show or on the blog. (Just like Jamie’s question!)

Ready for some “unlearning”….

Feature Segment

Un-masterminding, plus managing change and the dawn of a new era…

2014 was a big year! But I’m all about honesty and transparency, so I won’t kid you and say “my best year ever!” Made untold jillions of dollars, and started 50 new 7 figure JV projects and the like. There are plenty of other folks talking this stuff on the net. My real 2014 story is bit different.

2014 was big for me in what it WASN’T.

A bit of backstory…

2014 started off huge. Really well. New client projects, new products in the hopper, podcast was increasing by 25% a week or more, things were cooking along. But then something happened…

Masterminding. Yep, the “mastermind” that all the internet guru types always want us to sign up for. And I bought in. You see, around March of 2014—a little less than a year ago—I got this idea in my head that “things needed to change.”

Progress wasn’t moving fast enough. My wife and I looked at each other many a night and said to each other “you happy?”

“You satisfied with the direction of our life and business?”

Most of the time, the answer was either a flat out “no”, or a very tepid I-can’t-quite-convince-myself-but-will-say-it-anyway-to-make-us-both-feel-better kind of “sure……yes.”

Ok, my wife and I are both Type A—highly driven and impatient, but that’s a WHOLE other story.

What IS the story, is that this line of thinking made me impulsive. I started chasing growth just for growth’s sake. More numbers, more clients, more information, more classes, more more more more more!

I booked a bunch of conference, starting with a one-day “Mastermind”. This was an event put on by a famous internet marketer. To be fair, there were some super sharp people there. It just wasn’t the right venue for me personally to make wholesale changes to my message.

So I went, I shared, I listened to feedback, and I…..sadly…made a number of changes in my business.

And guess what?

I changed my materials. Changed podcast titles and formats. Changed the types of clients I was seeking to work with. Even made a few (thankfully not many) structural changes in the backend of the business itself. But instead of being a good-for-business thing, it was a bad-for-business thing.

I then:

• lost focus
• lost momentum
• lost audience
• reduced billing and income
• folks I thought would receive the message based on all this feedback I got did not want the message
• some of my hard-won, razor-sharp tech and business skills took on a faintly metallic rust color
• I got more frustrated
• I listened to more people
• I got more frustrated
• And..my wife and I ended up having even MORE of the conversations I started out the segment talking about

Something had to change…

What was wrong? In a word, (or a few words) I lost confidence.

I started looking to other people to answer questions for me, fill in the gaps, and essentially become “guest drivers” of our business car. To stretch the metaphor a bit, we had a few fender benders in this model.

Around my birthday time last year (end of September), I started to rethink a few things. Well, everything really.

• What I was doing
• Systems I was using
• What my overall “why” and “big purpose” was
• Who I wanted to help
• What my core strengths, weaknesses, and passions were
• How we wanted to grow the business and where we wanted to take it
• And more…

What I ended up doing was going on a major information and advice diet.

I:

• Unsubscribed from 40+ different newsletters (and subscribed to 4 new ones.)
• ‘Unlearned’ the concept that ‘free consulting’ is always a good thing (we’ll talk about that in an upcoming episode.)
• Unsubscribed from 12 different podcasts. (I now alternate between 5 and 6.)
• Aggressively filtered my email (check out my 80% email productivity boost article in the Resources section.)
• Learned to say a polite, but firm “NO” a lot more often. (In fact, I now say a polite “no” almost all the time, with precious few exceptions.)
• Unlearned the whole “gotta be in a mastermind thing”. I call it “un-masterminding.”
• Went on an information product diet.
• Tuned out of most self-help books and spiritual teachings—not ALL, just MOST. (I’ll share some of what I kept in an upcoming show.)
• Went back to tried-and-true functional apps, calendars, and analog tools.
• Got BACK in touch with the edgy guy that started this crazy journey so many years ago.
• Got BACK in touch with my big “why” and what’s really important in life: solid health, strong mind, blissful marriage, mutually nurturing relationships.
• Turned off my devices over 50% of their former run time (My friends, AIRPLANE mode is the KILLER phone app. Seriously.)
• Focused on better sleep.
• Focused on recommitting to all the 7 Keys to High-Performance Health.

Effectively, I unlearned a WHOLE lot about internet marketing, masterminding, and the high-information diet.

Where did the info diet and unlearning lead?

Results Time

Coming full circle, the reasons above and others lead to The Corbin Links Show hiatus.

You see, I really wanted to get clear on exactly WHAT I could bring to the table and contribute to others. And with clarity in hand, make a bold new commitment to it.

Frankly, I didn’t want my return to the mic to be something about a short-term “New Years Resolution” or any some-such. It had to be genuine, and something I was already living and practicing for a few months before starting again.

Other benefits of the new approach include:

• Increased focus, by a power of 10+. I know exactly what I’m going to do, and just as importantly what I’m not going to do.
• Fewer, but much higher-quality client relationships.
• 3x increase in business over the same period last year
• This new show you’re listening to.
• Increased financial savings.
• Increased investment back into the business.
• A net full EXTRA day with my wife, to enjoy life and do what we want to do
• And more!

There you have it. A bit about what I “unlearned” and “un-masterminded in 2014.

But my story is just a conduit and object lesson. The real purpose of this show is to help you and your business.

I’ll leave you with a challenge: what ONE thing can you unlearn—right now, this week—to make a bold impact on your life?

• Maybe it’s rekindling your passion for a lost hobby or languishing relationship.
• Or maybe it’s finalizing that tough business deal that has been going on for months without a concrete resolution.
• Or just finding an extra hour per week to spend with your loved ones.
• Whatever it is, think of one habit / skill, or bit of information that , if you “unlearned” it, would make a positive impact on your life.

When you decide, I’d love to know what it is! Share over at corbinlinks.com/contact, or hit me on Twitter. I’ll share contact information in the closeout segment.

Productivity Tool Segment

Each week I like to share one tool that makes a significant productivity difference in my life.

But before sharing, here are the things I look for in a productivity tool, device, or app:

1. It must be directly, or indirectly available at all times. If digital, either an app or clean access to a web version of the app must be available. If analog, such as pen / paper type stuff, it must be carry-able and accessible.
2. I must use it at least 5 days per week or more. It must be an ingrained part of my workflow.
3. It must verifiably save me time and / or frustration. Preferably both. I shoot for a minimum of 15 – 20% productivity gain for each selection. Sometimes that’s a bit aggressive a number, so at least 10%.
4. It must have a low or moderate learning curve. Like my audience, I’m consider myself a smart person in some ways. But when it comes to productivity devices and tools, I want ease-of-use, and to get up and running quickly.
5. Digital tools should support a variety of import and export formats, especially plain text. Lots of bonus points are awarded for universal Markdown-language tools that I can take with me anywhere.
6. It must be reliable. If in the cloud, it must sync everywhere and not go down all the time. If it’s a gadget, it must be easy to charge and maintain. Few things are more frustrating than building a bad case of “gadget dependency”—only to have it not boot up at the critical moment you need it.
7. Last but not least, it should have the ability to go completely away, or lose visibility when I no longer want to even THINK about productivity.

I know it’s a long list and I promise not to repeat it every week. This is the first segment, after all, so just laying the foundation.

Drumroll please…

This week’s pick is Wunderlist. Standard Edition. They also have a paid edition with some cool added team and subtask list feature. But personally, I haven’t (yet) found I needed them.

I did use Wunderlist for a while a few years ago, then abandoned it for the tool “Things” on the mac, and various paper-based systems.

Then I picked it up again a few months ago when adding a couple new windows virtual machines and android devices. This automatically disqualified the “Things” app on Mac, (which is still an awesome app, by the way) and led me to a combination app+web solution.

Wunderlist has come a long way since I first used back in 2010 (or was it 11?). Here are a few of my favorite things about the the latest version:

• Endless lists. I have a list for everything now. While that may seem overly cluttered, it’s just the way my brain operates. Plus I use it quickly capture ideas, outline podcasts, and all kinds of stuff.
• Sub Tasks! Yes, I even put an exclamation point next to that one. Subtasks are hugely cool, and make management a snap.
• Tasks are easy to move around. Ok, in all fairness, many modern task managers have this capability. But Wunderlist takes it to the next level by making it fast, error-free, and finger-friendly. No complicated finger contortions to gyrate around the small screen to move task “A” below task “B”. Just slide up and down. Easy.
• Blistering fast synchronization. I have multiple quad+ core machines sitting in a circle around me. And making an update on one copy instantly makes it appear on all other copies, including my two iOS and 1 Android device. I just never have to worry if the data is with me. If all devices but one took a dive on me, that ONE standing device would have what I needed.
• You can change the backgrounds and colors.
• Notes, attachments, team integration (even in the free version), task emails, print-to-mail, print-to-pdf, friendly exports galore.
• Multiple view modes. “Minify” is my favorite, as it collapses all other extraneous details around it and presents a full glorious view of one single task list. For those “gotta-be-in-focus” times, it’s a great productivity boost.
• Sane tracking of completed items. I especially like that all completed items show up when running a report. With some other task systems, completed tasks can disappear entirely, or be really hard to find and index. Again, EASY.

There’s lots more Wunderlist can do for you, but I’m hoping my list will inspire you to at least think about trying it. (I have no personal or business affiliation with them, just really like the product and all the new enhancements.)

And I think Wunderlist can be an awesome addition to your workflow.

Parting thoughts

Whew! We covered a lot of ground together.

Thanks for listening to Episode 1. If you like what you heard and find it useful, how about a favor? Please consider visiting iTunes and leaving a 5-star rating, and a written text review. It takes just a moment, but is a HUGE help and boost to the show. Ratings also help new listeners find the show and hear the message.

Coming Up on Next Week’s Show

The power of blueberries and gravity, questions about remote work, and a discussion of what makes a “Bangin’ business” and more. Stay tuned!

Thanks again for listening and I’ll see you next week. For now, this is Corbin Links signing off another episode of Bangin’ Your Business

Resources

• How to Up Your Health Game in 30 Days or Less
• How to Reduce Your Email by 80%
• Body Mind Institute
• Ask a Bangin’ kind of question
• Wunderlist Task List Manager
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow me on Twitter

Bangin’ Your Business is copyright 2011 – 2015 by Links Business Group LLC. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed by hosts and guests on this show remain theirs alone and do not reflect those of Links Business Group LLC, it’s partners or suppliers.