Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other peoples’ interests first. 

This is something that I struggle with most of the time, to be totally and brutually honest with you, I have always put my own interests first.  Even with the Connect the Dots eBook, I thought long and hard about selling it to the community.  After some serious and deep prayer about this, I decided that it would be better idea to share my experiences, my learnings from my mentors and even my thoughts with the entire Small Business Community.  Again my focus is to work on the Calgary community, and having a small bit of influence with the community to share my experiences is something I would just rather give than try to profit from it, 

On a side note:  Are you running around like a chicken with your head cut off?  Are you getting lots of stuff done being anxious, frenetic, or stressed about meeting deadlines, piling more on your plate or trying to be everything to everyone…how is that working out for you?

What are the core and universal principles for doing what we do in our lives?

Survive - Many entrepreneurs and business owners never leave this mindset.  They get up in the morning every day just hoping to survive and that is it.  They do not but play to survive in today`s world.  Here you are meeting your basic living needs.  Most people spend their entire lives here.

Save - Some decide to get out of the survive mindset, they save to go beyond the basic needs and expand your life. 

Serve - A few decide to play here and make a contribution to world around us, they benefit financially and also in all aspects of their life.  They keep their focus truly in this mindset.

Have you developed an army of personal walking ambassadors?

Developing a network of professionals is one of the most important things in business.  Networks of people, who know you, like you, trust you and have an interest in seeing you succeed in your life.  They may never buy a thing from you, however, they are so interested in your business and success that they are always thinking about you.  Do you have an army of personal walking ambassadors?  Do you have people that are personally interested in seeing your succeed.

When you have a team of personal walking ambassadors you will have more referrals that you can handle.  How many of us would love this?

How do you make a network like this happen?  It is time to stop keeping score!

Don’t keep score or keep track, when you keep score or track of referrals that is not networking that is POKER.  I have never kept track of referrals and I have probably given out more than I have taken in my time with IT Matters.  And who cares!  I don’t.  In my book “Connecting the Dots” I talk about the importance of networking and the focus on being finding people that can help you with your existing clients, not to sell them stuff.  Get my eBook for free at http://blog.itsuccessmentor.com/connect-the-dots

Watch out for the other guy!  Keep your colleagues interests close to you and naturally they would do the same.  Make your win about the other person, give 100% to those colleagues around you.

So maybe I haven’t been to self focused after all!

Money doesn’t create influence, it is a result of you being an influence on others