"The Hero's Journey" Painting by Larry Chambers

At the root the idea of Hero is connected with self-sacrifice. Sacrifice is the Hero’s willingness to give up something of value, perhaps even her own life, on behalf of an ideal or a group. Like soldiers who know that by enlisting they have agreed to give their lives if their country asks them to, Heroes accept the possibility of sacrifice. They may give up a loved one or friend along the way or some cherished vice or eccentricity as the price of entering into a new way of life. They may return some of their winnings or share what they have gained in the Special World. They may return to their starting point, and bring back boons, elixirs,

Heroes facing internal guardians, monsters, and helpers in the quest they find teachers, guides, demons, gods, mates, servants, scapegoats, masters, seducers, betrayers, and allies, or characters found in our dreams.  All the villains, tricksters, lovers,friends, and foes of the Hero can be found inside ourselves.

The Call is the adventure into the unknown.

The Refusal – this is where the hero may hesitate or hold back. She meets a Mentor that helps her.

The Crossing of the First Threshold –the hero goes forward in the adventure until she comes to the threshold Guardian. They guard the entrance to the zone of magnified power.

The Road Of Trails – Hero is tested and faces ordeals or a difficult task.

The Approach The Inmost Cave – The hero has a second threshold.

The Supreme Ordeal – Hero faces her toughest ordeal.

The Reward – The hero takes possession of the reward or some type of healing power, or breaks through a personal limitation and experiences spiritual growth.  After the hero’s triumph wins the blessings of the gods and is commissioned to rerun to the world.

The Road Back –The hero is transformed by the experience.

Return with the Elixir – a treasure that benefits the ordinary world.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell had spent his entire life investigating the myths and legends found in different cultures around the world.   Campbell found mythological themes repeat in every culture and every society.

Campbell wrote Hero With a Thousand Faces which could be applied to understanding of almost any human problem including going broke and restarting your life. These hidden patterns are used a guide to life by some of the most famous writers for books, and movies so there must be something to their order. I’ve taken the liberty of outlining an trying to reflect some of the common themes.

Campbell wrote that the hunter is an individual in a way that no farmer will ever be. Toiling in the fields and waiting for nature to tell you when you’re going to do it is one thing, but going off on a hunt—every hunt is a different hunt from the last one. And the hunters are trained in individual skills that require very special talents and abilities.

He says the hunter is always directed outward to the animal. His life depends on the relationship to the animals. His mythology is outward turned, that divergent thinking.  But the planting mythology, which has to do with the cultivation of the plant, the planting of the seed, the death of the seed, so to say, and the coming of the new plant, is more inward.   With the hunters, the animals inspired the mythology. When a man wanted to gain power and knowledge, he would go into the forest and fast and pray, and an animal would come and teach him.

With the planters, the plant world is the teacher. The plant world is identical in its life sequences with the life of man. There’s an inward relationship there. When you kill that animal, he’s dead—that’s the end of him. There is no such thing as a self-contained individual in the vegetal world. You cut a plant, and another sprout comes. Pruning is helpful to a plant. The whole thing is just a continuing in-beingness.

The planting culture

These plant stories actually penetrate as a hunting area in the Americas. The North American are is a very strong example of the interaction of hunting planting cultures. The Indians were chiefly hunters, but they also became growers (farmers).

There is a Algonquin Indian myth about a boy was wondering whether there might be some other way to get food besides hunting. The vision came to him out of his intention. And the boy says to his father at the end of the tale, “We no longer need to go out hunting now.” That was a moment these people became famers.

A good way to learn is to find a book that seems to be dealing with the problems that you’re now dealing with. That will give you some clues. Create a sacred place where you can sit in a read and read—and read and read. And read the right books

www.attractionbuilder.com

Attraction Marketing Intro Video by Larry Chambers. Shift from pursuit to pursed with this innovative new marketing method. Attraction Marketing is a hybrid, it creates a relationship with your prospects/clients before you ever meet.

“I just closed a multi-million dollar account from a complete stranger who found me. Sometimes just one idea can be worth a 1000 times its cost. I recommend Larry Chambers Attraction Marketing Series.” James O. Lunney Author of Surviving the Storm Founder of The Wealth Strategies Group

“Over the years, I’ve watched ordinary people become industry icons and wondered how they achieved the recognition. I looked behind the scenes and found Larry Chambers. In 2000, I sought him out to help me develop a credibility marketing program based on publishing articles and books. We now have doubled our clients who have 300 percent more assets by following the Larry Chambers Company marketing system: Plus, by writing a book I now have the visibility and expert status recognition and I’m solicited to give speeches and paid to give my talk.” Don Schreiber, Wealth Builders, and author of All About Dividend Investing McGraw-Hill 2005.”

Writing is valued by our culture as proof of intelligence, but who has the time?   

In the time it would take ordering a mocha latte Starbucks (7-minutes) you could have written an article, about 500 words or 3 Pages.

The 7-Minute Author™ provides a structure that can quickly turn your experience and know-how into something your audience can witness.  The Latte Factor gives you the time. Find a daily activity that you enjoy and substitute the time lost waiting with time spent writing.

Or, say your goal is to write a book. Just turbocharge the Latte Factor. By linking all of your Starbucks Latte moments they really add up; (5 days a week equals 60 pages or 10,000 words.  In five months that 50,000 words, add a month for rewriting, and editing and in less than six months you’ve written a book.   The average how-to book is 50,000 words.

You’ve got to look at more than just know how; today we need a plan and path to follow.  The ADD Advantage

The 7-Minute Author™ method and The FAST Book are found at www.attractionbuilder.com

Author Larry Chambers

Author Larry Chambers Ojai,CA.                                                                                                                                                                              Photo by Christin Chambers

Another similar example of less is more is found in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink wrote about Dr. Lee Goldman an emergency room physician.  Dr. Goldman discovered that too much information was causing doctors to make mistakes in the ER by missing a heart attack because they failed to recognize when someone was on the verge of having one. He found that a person could walk in a hospital with chest pain and get advice that was all over the map. A patient might be sent home by one doctor or checked into intensive care by another.

Goldman fed hundreds of heart attack cases into his computer, looking for things that could predict a heart attack. He came up with a standard equation that took the guesswork out of treating chest pain. But his equation only had three factors:

( 1) Is the pain felt by the patient really unstable angina? (2) Is there fluid in the patients lungs?, and (3) Is the patient’s systolic blood pressure below 100?

Goldman then drew up a decision tree that recommended a treatment option for each combination of the three risk factors. Ironically, the only place he found interested in funding his research didn’t come from tile medical community but from an unlikely source — the U.S. Navy. The Navy supported the project for the most arcane of reasons: If you’re tile captain of a submarine, snooping around at the bottom of an unfriendly ocean, and one of your sailors gets terrible chest pains, do you risk giving away your position by surfacing and evacuating the sailor—or do you just give the sailor an antacid and hope he doesn’t die?

My take: having a degree doesn’t mean you are smart, it just means you’re good at taking tests and enjoy spending years and years on boring class work.

Dr. Liam Hudson Director of the Research Unit on Intellectual Development at King’s College, Cambridge England wrote a book about this back in the 60s[1].  He toured around English public schools—elite schools—giving hundreds of tests to the most promising 15- and 16-year-old boys. What he found was the boys with the highest IQs were the least creative while the most creative scored low on the IQ.  Hudson realized that the standard IQ test questions required a convergent answer.

He defined two type of thinkers; the scientific ‘converger’ and the artistic, imaginative ‘diverger’.   Converger aims for a single correct solution to a problem while the imaginative diverger generated many possible solutions.  He also wrote how universities testing was designed to accept the ‘convergent thinker over the divergent thinker which has caused an abundance of convergent thinking in our society.  They have dominated the colleges and universities and had a competitive advantage over the divergent thinkers when it comes to jobs, careers, and professions.

Dr. Goldman was demonstrating divergent thinking when he chose a different pathway than the established route.  By the way, Medicine (IAI) is the third leading cause of death; incorrect procedures, infections, side effects from drugs and bad advice.  Don’t believe me look it up.

The convergent thinking doctors select the most likely pathway by excluding all other routes.  Each step results directly from the preceding step, to which they remain firmly connected.  The soundness of the resulting conclusion is proven by the soundness of the steps by which it has been reached.  On the other hand the divergent thinking doctor is capable of holding conflicting thought and systems of value.

The reason Goldman couldn’t get funding for his research from the medical establishment; it’s made up of convergent thinking gatekeepers who are going to disapprove of anyone being imaginative.

The successful divergent thinkers learned early on how to maneuver around obstacles and bypass the guarded convergent thinking systems. The occurrence of dyslexia among wealthy entrepreneurs is stunning.  A few examples: Kinko’s founder, Paul Orfalea; Charles Schwab, Jet Blue’s David Nelman; Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, and Quentin Tarantino.  Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, reported in an interview that self-made millionaires are four-times as likely to be dyslexic as the rest of the population

Best

Larry

[1] Contrary Imaginations – A Psychological Study of the English Schoolboy Dr. Liam Hudson Pelican Books 1966

Is it reasonable to submit the same article/story to several publications or is it best to change it for each one? How long is a reasonable amount of time to wait to hear back and follow through?

Hey Elana,

I say focus your energy on one editor at a time. Mass mail is not effective and rarely ever works. Do one at a time, Change it for sure, give each one a week, then follow up with a phone call, if they turn you down just go to the next one.

Best Of Luck
Larry C

The real problem is most people don’t have a big enough reason to learn how to write effectively.   I’ll give you the reason and you’ll figure out the how.

Writing is valued by our culture as proof of intelligence.   Let that sink in. Especially if you are providing a service wouldn’t you want your clients and customers to believe that you are smart?

Most people (mostly men) during their school years had a bad experience, couldn’t spell or got shamed by a teacher so they made the decision that they hate writing and would rely on their verbal language skills.   It’s true that good writing takes years but everyone can write.

The problems and the fixes; ‘I can’t spell’ (that’s a great, most creative people included myself can either. Work around it, hire someone to edit, I have three and keep them busy.

‘I don’t have the time.’ Get up earlier.

‘I don’t know what goes where?’ Teachers call it grammar, I call it ‘structure’ – go to my 7-Minute Author chapter in the Attraction Workbook or look at my bookstore. The 7-Minute Author provides a structure that can quickly turn your ideas, knowledge and know how into something your audience can witness.But

Most people start by giving an organizational history, describing their college background, listing degrees and designations and the number of years they have been in business—but say nothing about who they really are.

After you’ve taken a stab at your positioning sentence, ask yourself these questions:

Why do I exist?  What is my purpose in life? Does my message show the world that I feel confident/passionate about it?  Is there a true benefit to my audience?  Work on refining your message into a simple, clear communication that you believe in.

Try a couple of variations

Start using your purpose statement in your everyday business conversations.  Add it to written material for your clients, and use a version of it as your byline for any articles you publish.  Does your statement need to include more information?  Does it ramble on and confuse your audience?  Re-evaluate your purpose statement based on questions you are asked.

Try contrasting your purpose with your competition.  List your differences and contrast them with your competition.

What is your purpose?

Think for just a minute about your business model and all the functions your perform: benchmark reporting, avoiding conflicts of interest, customization, abroad range of investment options, open architecture, transparent pricing, local presence, fee-based pricing and the responsibilities of a fiduciary.  Why do you do this?

Your test is to uncover your unique position sentence one that communicates to your market what your service is about.  If necessary, borrow from successful ones.

Before you move out from your staging area, ask yourself these questions:  Does my statement clearly tell the world what it is that I do?  Is it compelling and differentiating?

Review business journals and magazines; pull out advertisements that catch your eye.  Then try adapting the concept, theme or syntax of the strongest ads to your own set of beliefs.

Keep in mind, as you rehearse this process, that your prospects and clients are not the least bit interested in your product or service.  They are intensely interested in themselves and in what your product or service can do for them.  Put your investment service(s) or product(s) under the microscope and identify solutions they provide.

Design all your marketing materials to position you as a messenger of financial solutions.  “I solve financial problems.”  “I keep people from making costly mistakes.  Let me show you how.”

A carefully thought out purpose can educate people about who you are.  It can turn off the people you don’t want to work with, and turn on the ones you do!

But I’m Not always Creative

Here are three things that will make you 10 times more creative.

1. Go work out- movement creates dopamine.  Dopamine is most often described as the pleasure chemical that turns your brain on.
2. Take your recorder on workouts and runs.
3. Use your imagination.  Use a large board and mind map all the way that thing you are working on – won’t work.  That may lead to some that will.

I do not agree with them. Consider a referral as a gift but not a marketing strategy.  An unsolicited referral is out of your control and asking for a referral put the relationship off balance.  How? Asking for a referral goes beyond law of reciprocity. Reciprocity is the belief that if I do something for you, I have a right to expect that you’ll do something of equal or greater value for me.  The problem is as soon as you ask for a referral the relationship is thrown out of balance. The person didn’t become a client to become a part of your marketing program – the client has fulfilled his end of the transaction by investing in your service.

You are supposed to leave your client feeling served, not asked them to serve you.

Make it easy for your clients to give you a referral.  Don’t ask, enable.   Integrate a referral-enabling system into your regular routine. Treat everyone as if they are the most important person in the world.

Implicitly, a recommendation must be earned, which leads to the next point.

The best referrals are not given to you; they are given to another person on your behalf.  Here is how it usually happens: People are in a social situation and an issue or problem comes up.

1. Put a process in place so when referral opportunities happen you are ready.
2. Respond to referrals quickly
3. Treat all referrals professionally and they may ultimately become yet another referral source!
4. Respond quickly to anyone who contacts you as a result of a referral.
5. Keeping this a top priority on your “to do” list keeps the referral calls coming and ultimately saves you time.

Try this tactic – Give referrals don’t ask for them

Find out how one client could benefit from another’s product or service.  When someone thanks you, that is the best time to seek a recommendation.  Here is what you might say: “Thank you.  I enjoy working with people like you, and I would be grateful if you would recommend me to others.”  No pressure, no hassle, just an affirmation of the client, a word of thanks and an expression of gratitude.  That’s how you develop a great recommendation script.

Clients don’t wake up thinking, Boy, I think I’m going to refer my financial advisor today, or I bet old Jim could use a good CPA.  The following eight concrete action steps will improve the odds of getting a referral from every client:

Plant the seed.   Send out a confirmation letter before client meetings in which you mention that your firm is accepting new clients.  Suggest that if your client knows anyone who might benefit, he/she can let you know at the meeting.  Use newsletters or client letters to inform your mailing list that you are currently accepting new clients.  This is even more effective if you can link it to a new partner joining the firm or the addition of staff.

You may decide to ask for recommendations at your semi-annual or annual client meetings; you may mention recommendations in every client letter; or you may distribute a designated number of special mailings per year related to referrals.

Allow them to control the initial contact A person may be unwilling to name names, but would be perfectly comfortable recommending you to others.  If this seems to be the case, encourage them by providing a brochure or letter detailing your capabilities that they can pass on to potential clients.  Provide a reply card that referrals can return to your office.

Return Favors.

When people do favors for you, they do not necessarily expect that you will return them; however, people appreciate it when you do!  Two good things typically happen as a result of a returned favor: people want to do more favors for you, and they are more likely to refer you when the opportunity presents itself.

Reward desired behaviors  When your clients provide a referral, reinforce the behavior by sending a handwritten thank-you note or even a small token of gratitude.  Showing your appreciation promotes continued referrals.

Give them an easy way to responds

“Call me if you know anyone” is not likely to generate a referral, so consider giving clients a postcard to return on which they list the names of potential clients.  Follow-up phone calls or letters can also be productive.  Raise their comfort level.  Some people are deterred from referring others by concern that your actions might mar their relationship with those that they refer.  Be clear about your intentions by explaining that you plan to contact the prospect by phone or mail in a non-invasive manner.

Timing your referral requests is important.  After reviewing favorable portfolio results, consider a statement such as, “We’ve done well this quarter.  I hope you are pleased.  Would you know anyone who might be interested in the quality of investment advice I’ve provided to you?”  Present a referral request as an opportunity for clients to do a favor for someone.  “Do you know anyone who might benefit from my service. It would mean a lot to have a positive recommendation from you?” and don’t forget to say – Thank you.

Think: Enrollment (Self-Selective Sales)