My world-class business manager, Cindy Gallo

So, would you like a business manager that anticipates your needs? Organizes your office (and your life)? Can manage web sites, online shopping carts and lots of customer inquiries? A business manager who creates so much business, that you have to start paying her commission as an act of appreciation? Oh, yeah, EVERYONE needs a Cindy!!!

Since we’re not hiring out ‘our Cindy,’ I’m going to share with you EXACTLY how we attracted Cindy into our business and how you can do the same.

First, Mark, my husband, and I sat down and discussed our ideal business manager. We listed his/her qualities.

Then Mark crafted a job posting to put on www.craigslist.com.

Here’s how the listing read (feel free to ‘swipe’ and modify for your Self!):

Craig’s List Help Wanted

Husband-and-wife-entrepreneur team seeks personal admin assistant that is motivated, reliable, responsible and organized and that wants to excel in their own life and is looking for a long-term commitment. Our business is growing rapidly and this is an excellent opportunity for growth in pay, responsibility and additional commission-based income above hourly rate (or salary).

Our business consists of Dan Kennedy-style online and offline information marketing with related workshops (in town and in other states) and public speaking engagements. We are also real estate investors, so an understanding of real estate paperwork requirements would be helpful.

Knowledge of 1ShoppingCart (or other similar shopping cart software), autoresponder setup and delivery, email marketing, ezine delivery and shopping cart data base management will greatly affect pay rate, as will a basic knowledge of website programming.

Great opportunity for rapid advancement in pay and responsibility with commission opportunities for up-selling products to existing customers. Some travel is essential for help with our out-of-town workshops and speaking engagements where you will be our personal assistant (all travel and expenses paid).

This is a positive, energetic and FUN business and we are looking for someone with a personality to match. You will work with us at our home (moving soon, location not yet determined). You will also work virtually with other team members in other states and some work from your home is also possible.

Must have your own car and be willing to do errands around town such as make deposits, pick up office supplies and mail, etc.

ESSENTIAL requirements:

Good communication skills and a cheerful disposition
Have own laptop computer with relatively current software
Typing and word processing ability
Understanding of Microsoft Outlook or similar
Understanding of database management
Understanding of Power Point and Excel spreadsheet setup
Faxing, filing, answering phones
Dealing with customer service issues
Scheduling appointments
Mailing out customer kits

$_____ to $_____/hr to start, with opportunity to advance rapidly to FT salary w/benefits

We then received nearly 50 resumes!

We dumped all the ones that were unrelated to our requests or had typos.

I then found Cindy’s resume and thought, “This woman is PERFECT!” BUT it said she lived in San Diego. Hmmmm… we live in Tucson. Mark called her and found out she was moving back to Tucson after being away for a while. Lucky us!

Now here’s the kicker: Cindy was the ONLY person we interviewed. We liked her and hired her immediately with a 90-day probationary period as a 1099 contractor. She sailed through with flying colors and then we hired her as a salaried employee. Our bookkeeper handles the tax payments and paychecks for our employees.

Now Cindy needs her own assistant! So we’ve put her in charge of hiring someone to help her, using the same process.

However, we improved the process to make it simpler, by adding this instruction as a ‘test’ to the job posting:

“If you would like to be considered for the position, please send a typo-free cover letter and resume. Let us know why you think you are perfect for this position in your cover letter. Send both documents via FEDEX to this address: The Hand Analyst, Inc., 7320 N. La Cholla Blvd., Suite 154-515, Tucson, AZ 85741 by this date____________. No emailed resumes or phone calls accepted.”

That request weeds out all the looky-loos and brings you only seriously invested candidates for your job opening.

Here’s to your success finding ‘your Cindy’ because “everyone needs a Cindy!”

I’ll tell you what I really think. I think that many popular human beliefs are bunk, child’s play, even foolish. Beliefs we take for granted now – a round Earth spins around the sun, invisible germs cause illness, the music industry must adapt or die – were once laughed at as fantasy. Question EVERYTHING.

This is what I’ve come to understand, for myself, about belief. Since you can believe whatever you want, why not foster beliefs that honor your Highest Self? Why not cultivate thinking that says “yes” with curiosity rather than shutting something out because you can’t make it fit inside your worldview?

I’ll give you an example. Recently, I had dinner with some new acquaintances. We were discussing what to charge in our businesses. One of the women, a passionate yoga instructor, bristled when I suggested that her financial pinch was likely due to undercharging, and in many instances, giving her work away for free or nearly free.

She began defending her pricing, explaining to me that the economy, the neighborhood her business is located in and the clients themselves simply couldn’t sustain higher prices. Her voice grew tight and angry.

Bunk.

What she was really defending was her desire to stay small and safe in the world she knew.

To find more desirable clients willing to pay more desirable prices, she would have to drop the external explanations for her financial challenges and expand internally into a new concept of herself.

In other words, this talented teacher and healer needed to find the inner KNOWING of her own value and worth, then be open to receiving its reflection back to her in the form of ideal clients, more money and more joy.

Her financial expansion actually depends on her capacity to expand her awareness of her profound and needed value in the world.

At some point, most of us come to the realization that our beliefs either expand our consciousness (and opportunities!) or contract our soul to the point of alienation, stagnation, boredom, apathy, frustration, even rage or depression.

In my late 20s, I had to reach the point of questioning the usefulness of my own life – and damaging my health, relationships and self-esteem in the process – to realize that I had to make a radical shift in my thinking, in my conscious awareness, in order to get out of my self-imposed (and frankly, self-indulgent) exile.

I resorted to prayer and asked, “God, Universe, Higher Power – whatever is out there – if you show me my Life’s Purpose, I will forever be your humble servant.”

Two weeks later, a young woman named Terry-Linn showed up at my door and explained, via my palms, that my Life Purpose is to be a “Successful Spiritual Teacher and Business Owner with a Special Message for the Masses.” Um, okay.

I didn’t stop crying for about a month after that session. But I decided to ‘believe’ this concept about myself and my purpose on the planet. What IF what she told me was true? What could it hurt to believe it? My own self-concept wasn’t getting me any traction forward.

My life began to change in subtle and dramatic ways. Subtle: I started eating better, my chronic bronchitis cleared up, the negative ‘friends’ dropped away. Dramatic: I quit my job, got a business loan, started a business, took a road trip called “Hands of America” that funded my travels around the U.S. and was actually making a good living doing something I LOVED – reading hands.

I found wonderful friends, had amazing adventures traveling to new places and discovered something that had once been a foreign concept to me – I was okay. Could it be that the magnificence of the Universe lived in every cell of my body? Could it be that I was expanding like the Universe, coming to know myself through education, experience and ecstatic creative expression?

YES. My belief system had changed and I was completely transformed with it.

I’ve since come to ‘believe’ that negative thinking is not of the Universe. It is a natural consequence of nature wanting to protect our precious flesh-and-blood body, but beyond that, is unnecessary. I’d go so far to say, that today (it could change tomorrow – when I discover something else!) I believe that our TRUE LIFE PURPOSE is to love, enjoy and create in order to fulfill the Universe’s desire to expand through our expanding consciousness.

As YOU expand your self-concept, you literally shift the consciousness of the Universe. How cool is that? Now THAT is a belief I can get behind.

So, today, I leave you with this:

YOU are gorgeous and blessed. You’ve been given the perfect physical body, mind and spirit to create exactly what you came here to create. And what you came here to create is exactly – and ONLY – what YOU WANT TO CREATE. You have the total power to DECIDE. You have the total power to BE. ONLY YOU. The entire Universe lives inside you. As you see and declare you own magnificence and worthiness, never again will you question your right to be joyful, blissful and expressed. You are here now to learn, love, and most of all, live it, live it ALL, full out, no excuses! What are you waiting for? BE, DO and HAVE what you really, really, really want right now.

Why?

I want my consciousness to keep expanding! I thank you for loving yourself. And so does the Universe.

Bring your Life Purpose and Life Lesson questions to our NEXT Life Purpose Master Mind TeleClass on Thursday, September 23rd at 5 PM Pacific. For NEW MEMBERS ONLY, the first month is FREE and the new investment is $19.97 a month thereafter. GO HERE to get onboard. Our BRAND NEW Life Purpose Master Mind site will be up shortly! Join the hundreds of members who are committed to living their Life Purpose FULL OUT in 2010 and BEYOND!

Sometimes your Life School, whether it be Peace, Wisdom, Love or Service, is also your Life Lesson. This data is derived from your fingerprint patterns.

What does this mean?

Well, your Life School is the foundation of your ‘magic purpose pyramid:’

Your Life School foundation is where you learn through trial and error the necessary skills to navigate the potholes, gremlins, and creepy crawlies at level two of the pyramid: Your Life Lesson. Your Life Lesson is your shadow, your nemesis, your ‘I just can’t get rid of it’ issue.

AND your Life Lesson is the breakthrough to your life. If you MASTER your Life Lesson with equanimity and grace to the best of your ability, you are granted an all-access pass to the top level of the pyramid, the penthouse suite – Your Life Purpose!

Sometimes your Life School and Life Lesson are the same, meaning your Life Lesson could be Peace, Wisdom, Love or Service.

Today, we’re going to look at the School of Wisdom as Life Lesson. If Wisdom is your school and/or Life Lesson, pay close attention. If not, just be aware that we all deal with “wisdom” issues at some point in our lives.

The School of Wisdom is about using what you know, about taking action by accessing all of your inner resources and learning through both understanding and experience.

Folks in the School of Wisdom tend to swing between two polarities. One is inaction and indecision. The other is reckless action, usually initiated to break the inertia caused by the former condition of fence-sitting.

Each Life School is related to a different part of the human experience: School of Peace (Body) = feeling safe in your body and on the planet; School of Love (Heart) = expressing what you feel fully and experiencing unconditional love; and School of Service (Spirit) = connecting to the Divine and being an expression of presence in all you do by learning to serve your Self first so that you can serve others.

The School of Wisdom is the realm of the mind but more specifically, the aspect of the mind that allows us to make decisions and then take ACTION on those decisions. The element associated with the School of Wisdom is fire. Fire represents movement, change, blazing a trail, initiation, beginnings and transformation. The goal is to get ‘out of your head’ and into motion, to move your hands and legs of fire and make your mark in the world.

The Core Fear for the School of Wisdom is the fear of making a wrong decision, hence the indecision and waffling. The upside of this fear is that folks in the School of Wisdom tend to be great analysts, engineers, lawyers, contract specialists, strategists, financiers and planners of all sorts. Any type of work that requires heavy analysis, investigation and fact checking utilizes the typical skepticism, scrutiny and sometimes-cynicism of the typical ‘Wisdom’ student.

The downside for Wisdom students can include fixation on particular Catch-22 problems that seem to have no resolution, repetitive negative-thought patterns, and relentless anxiety and agitation. Whereas folks in the School of Peace tend to deal with a more visceral, body-based panic when up against their demons, School of Wisdom folks deal in anxiety, followed by emotional shutdown and backed up by a persistent line of reasoning that may, in fact, lack a good deal of reason.

If you need someone to help you come up with a good strategy, a School of Wisdom member is usually a good candidate. And if you’re in the mood to be driven crazy by a repetitive argument that cannot be won (School of Wisdom folks specialize in mind riddles), engage a Wisdom School student.

The breakthrough for you if Wisdom is your test is learning how you make decisions and then using your own system to MAKE DECISIONS and ACT upon them.

For example, perhaps when presented with a new opportunity that requires a quick decision, you:

• Scan your body (School of Peace) for any physical symptoms or sensations;
• Then check in with your heart to see how you’re feeling (School of Love) and
• Then ask yourself, “Does this opportunity help me more fully express my Life Purpose in the world and be of Service?” (School of Service)
• Finally, review your diagrams and lists and check your facts.
• Now that you have all of this information, on the balance of things, what is your conclusion? DECIDE.
• Now take action on your decision.

Once you have made your decision, I recommend you don’t look back and just move forward. Doubting our decisions after we’ve made them is incredibly debilitating to our self-esteem and ability to stay on track.

As you begin to trust your decisions and take action with more certainty, you are going to notice what works and what doesn’t. Life isn’t about making the ‘right’ choice, but learning from the choices we do make so we can make better choices moving forward. The more you are able to commit to your decisions and put yourself at stake for something that really matters to you, the less anxiety and the more joy you will experience.

Two books I highly recommend for those on the Wisdom path are Power vs. Force by Dr. David Hawkins and Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute www.arbinger.com. Both books are lucid and compelling investigations into the sometimes-twisted workings of the mind and how the mind can be your road to emancipation or enslavement.

Bring your Life Purpose and Life Lesson questions to our NEXT Life Purpose Master Mind TeleClass on Thursday, August 19^th at 5 PM Pacific. For NEW MEMBERS ONLY, the first month is FREE and the new investment is $19.97 a month thereafter. (NOTE: For regular and returning members, on your next billing cycle, you’ll be billed at ONLY $19.97! Unbelievable!)

GO HERE to get onboard. Our BRAND NEW Life Purpose Master Mind site will be up shortly! Join the hundreds of members who are committed to living their Life Purpose FULL OUT in 2010 and BEYOND!