When thinking about what you need to do to have a successful business, it is very easy to get weighed down by looking at all of the potential obstacles in the way of your success. You start focusing too much on things far off and how many things must be accomplished along the way. Doing this very unproductive. It stimulates all of your fears and will begin to steal your productivity if you let it.

Any long term goal needs to be broken down into smaller attainable goals. This is all part of the “elephant principle”. I’m sure you have heard of it. It goes something like this…

Question: How do you eat an elephant?

Answer: One bite at a time.

The next time you are staring at a gigantic elephant of a goal and think you will never be able to conquer it, don’t look at the challenge in its entirety. Break it down into smaller steps (bites) and follow your path to success one step at a time.

You will build experience and confidence with each small step you take. You will be getting better and more skilled as you go. You will start to pick up momentum that will enable you to pick up speed and you will eventually get to a point where your success will come faster than you ever imagined.

Identify your elephants and get your fork and knife ready.  Don’t let fear paralyze you.

Onward to success……

- Hill Robertson

Well, I’ve been changing some things around on this blog. I wanted a little bit of a different look so I have been testing out some changes. I still need to do some more tweaking so you may see changes every now and then. Don’t panic if things look a little different all of a sudden. I may be updating the theme when those things happen.

I still need to update the top logo image. Right now it is a little boring. I haven’t decided exactly what to do yet. But you’ll see what happens when I do it anyway.

I noticed that when I put up the new theme, the RSS feed got updated and it sent out a broadcast email for several of my recent entries.  I’m sorry if you got a bunch of emails from my blog during the transition.

Please feel free to post a comment if you see anything strange or something does not work properly so I can fix it. Thanks for your patience while I update it.

- Hill Robertson

As I walk out my front door each morning, a fresh crisp nip is in the air. My nose catches subtle scents of nearby chimneys quietly permeating the air as families are nestled in their cozy homes to the warmth of a relaxing, crackling fire. There is a stronger sense of love and compassion with everyone you meet. You can hear an extra special excitement in the laughter of children as they play all around the neighborhood.

The warm glow of a fireplace with yummy toasted marshmallows and roasted chestnuts brings back memories of many youthful past Christmas seasons with many loved ones gathered around. Some of those precious people are still with us and remind us of the “good ol’ days” while others have already passed on leaving us with their memories and stories to pass on to our young ones.It is a time of joy, sharing, caring, tradition, and fond memories.

It is a time of smores and hot chocolate. It is a time of bells, bows, and mistletoe. It is a time of playing mall tag team with your spouse as one of you handles the kids while the other buys their gifts and hides them somewhere hoping that the kids will not find the gifts before Christmas. It is a time when your children make cardboard ornaments for the tree and finger paintings for the fridge. It is a time for receiving Christmas cards from every one you know and forgetting to get your Christmas cards done in time to send out.

It is a time for focusing on what is really important in your life and maybe getting a glimpse of your purpose in life. Even though it is an extremely busy time, you somehow find a way to enjoy the peace and serenity of the season and you get to spend quality time with your family and make some special memories to last a lifetime. You will see the innocent excitement in your children’s eyes and you will feel the need and love in the touch of their little hands. Your heart will melt as you want to be a better parent and you want to spend more time with them.

You will renew your love for your spouse all over again and you will remember why you love them so much and why you fall in love with them over and over again. You will realize you need to spend more time with your family.

As you think about these things and get caught up in the moment, think about what you can do to spend more time with the ones you love most. Make the necessary changes to do what is most important. It is your family and your life. It is your choice.

- Hill Robertson

I am a big Orlando Magic fan. I just got back from the game tonight against the Indiana Pacers. This year, the Magic are one of the top teams in the NBA and the league is really starting to take notice. The Pacers are currently floating around .500. Tonight’s game should have been an easy win for the Magic. It turns out, the Magic got beat all the way around.

As soon as the game was over, I got in my car and turned on the radio to listen to the post game commentators and call in listeners with their comments. Many of the comments were of a gloom and doom nature. After a loss many fans quickly started focusing on all of the negatives and were complaining about every aspect of the game (even though their record is 16-5). I got tired of hearing the negative comments so I turned off the radio. I try to avoid negative things.

The only attention I give to anything negative is to use it to learn how NOT to do something. Learning from mistakes is very valuable if you don’t use the mistakes as an excuse to quit striving for your goals. Every mistake eliminates another way not to do something so you are one step closer to conquering your task. Don’t let the negative bring you down. Don’t dwell on it.

We’ll see how the Magic do at their next game. Will they hang their heads by focusing on the fact that they lost to a team they should have beat, or will they learn from their mistakes and improve their play to be winners?

More importantly, will you hang your head the next time you fail and call it quits? Or, will you learn from your mistakes and make the necessary changes to improve your success and move on knowing you are even closer to your goals?

It is your choice which path you will take.

- Hill Robertson

For many years, I never realized how valuable my talents were to others. Since I began playing with Linux and building websites in the early 90s, I got really good at doing some fancy things because it was one of my passions. For fun, I would set up old PCs I had laying around and load Linux on them (for you geeks, I used the Slackware distribution on a bunch of floppys - those were the days). I started networking them together and learning the inside and out of tcp, upd, sockets, and anything else related to networking. I loved it. It was my passion (and still is).

Since it was one of my passions, I naturally enjoyed being around people with similar “hobbies” and skill sets. So, when the people I associated with knew the same things I knew, I didn’t “feel” like I had a marketable skill to others. I had the false impression that “everyone” knew about the same things. Sure, I felt like I knew more than a lot of people and might be able to make some money by selling my skills or knowledge but I WAY undersold my services. After many years, I finally realized how many people wanted the information that came so natural to me. Because it was second nature to me, I didn’t realize the value that information was to others.

What are your talents? What are you skilled at? Do you realize that there are a lot of people interested in your “second nature” skills and will pay good money to acquire some of your knowledge? All you need to do is to blog about it and create a product to sell. This can get you started on your way to success.

So, find your talents and realize how valuable they are to others. Don’t underestimate your value. Use it to be a success!

- Hill Robertson

What do want to achieve in the next year? What kind of income do you want to make in 2 years? When do you want to take that long vacation you keep talking about taking with your family “some day”?

These types of dreams are nice and they can be the beginning of setting goals, but they are not goals by themselves unless they have a date attached to them. You need to set dates on all of your dreams that you want to reach if you REALLY want to reach them. Then, you need to break down the goals into smaller goals (or milestones) along the way that will help you reach the bigger goals.

When you are setting your goals, be sure to set milestone goals that you can reach. It will give you a great sense of accomplishment when you reach these smaller goals and it will build your confidence for the next goal. Then, just keep repeating your successful behavior to reach the next goal and the next and the next……. Pretty soon you will reach the longer term goals.

Don’t compare yourself to others while working to attain your goals. You can easily get discouraged by comparing yourself to others already successful. It can really get you down when you have been working on making an extra $1000 per month for the last six months and you see that some one else is making $5000 per month after only a couple of months. You will start thinking you are doing something wrong or that it is just not for you. You will end up talking yourself out of success and you will quit. So don’t compare yourself to others. Just focus on what you need to do to take the next step in your business.

Set long term and short term goals. Focus on those goals. Don’t worry about what others are doing. Focus and just do it. You CAN do it! Now go and set your goals.

- Hill Robertson