Posted by Rich Harshaw on March 31, 2015.
Post Category: Personal Edge.
Don’t Let Uncle Sam Tax Your Retirement Dreams Into Oblivion. Here’s How…
This Little-Known Retirement Savings Strategy Beats The Pants Off
Your 401(k) or IRA… Both For Tax Savings AND Eliminating Market Risk.
By Rich Harshaw
Note: About once a month, Monopolize Your Marketplace takes a break from contractor marketing advice and focuses on personal development topics. We call this ongoing series “Personal Edge.” Enjoy!
Every single one of the 10,000+ companies I’ve ever helped with their marketing in the last 20+ years thinks that their company is pretty much the GREATEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD.
I’m serious—all of them. From manufacturers to consultants to health care professionals… and any kind of company you can think of. They all think they’re fantastic. And remodelers are certainly no exception.
Truth be told, while most of the companies I have dealt with are really good at what they do, they’re not all that spectacularly different than some of their higher-caliber competitors. Hear me loud and clear: I’ve worked with a ton of really great companies. But even those great companies usually have at least a few competitors who are in their same ballpark.
But every once in awhile I find that true diamond in the rough—a company that offers products or services that are orders of magnitude better than anything else on the planet. The true “Best Kept Secret.”
In 2007, one of those companies found me.
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Posted by Rich Harshaw on February 26, 2015.
Post Category: Personal Edge.
A Forgotten Man Named Rowan Teaches Us That The World Craves People Who Will Just Go And Get The Job DONE.
A Word Of Sympathy For Business Owners Dealing With Slipshod Assistance, Foolish Inattention, Dowdy Indifference, And Half-Hearted Work.
By Rich Harshaw
Note: About once a month, Monopolize Your Marketplace takes a break from contractor marketing advice and focuses on personal development topics. We call this ongoing series “Personal Edge.” Enjoy!
Like all business owners, I find it challenging to find employees with the right combination of skillset, attitude, initiative, and passion.
And since Monopolize Your Marketplace is a “virtual company”—meaning we have no physical office and everyone works alone, from home—finding people with real initiative is EXTRA critical.
That’s why I developed a little test several years ago designed to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I created a little questionnaire that I have people fill out instead of looking at resumes. The questionnaire has twenty questions that ask the kind of stuff you’d expect—tell me about a time you worked well in a deadline situation, what other positions are you considering, how do you feel about working from home—like that.
But question twenty-first question is the real doozy.
It says: Google A Message To Garcia and find the essay by Elbert Hubbard. Read the essay and answer the following three questions:
- What are you overall impressions of the essay?
- Name three times in your life where you’ve performed like Rowan in the essay.
- How do you think this essay might apply to your potential job with us?
And that essay, A Message To Garcia, is what I’d like to talk to you about today.
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Posted by Rich Harshaw on January 29, 2015.
Post Category: Personal Edge.
Believe It Or Not, The Key To Reaching Your Goals
Is Learning To Do Less.
That’s Right—Less, Not More.
By Rich Harshaw
Note: About once a month, Monopolize Your Marketplace takes a break from marketing advice and focuses on personal development topics. We call this ongoing series “Personal Edge.”
Enjoy!
Ever notice how nobody ever talks about New Year’s resolutions after about January 10th or 15th?
That’s because it normally only takes a couple weeks for our collective resolve, willpower, and determination to melt away like butter on a hot stove.
Or more accurately stated: our will to improve ourselves gets overpowered and drowned out by the routine rat race of life. Going to the gym sounds great until you have to decide between an hour of exercise or catching up on the twenty-seven unreturned phone calls sitting on your phone. Earning extra money is exciting until you realize that you barely have enough time to earn the money you’re already supposed to be earning anyway.
The problem always comes down to time. There’s never enough of it.
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Posted by Rich Harshaw on December 30, 2014.
Post Category: Personal Edge.
25 Years Ago I Learned A Surefire Goal Setting Method While Serving As A Missionary In Taiwan
Believe It Or Not, A Counter-Intuitive Goal Setting Process That Allowed Me To Produce The Best Missionary Results In Taiwan’s History… Can Work For You, Too.
By Rich Harshaw
Note: About once a month, Monopolize Your Marketplace takes a break from marketing advice and focuses on personal development topics. We call this ongoing series “Personal Edge.” Enjoy!
“Those giant white guys on huge bicycles.”
Even though I only stand a modest six feet tall wearing shoes in the United States, when I served two years as a Mormon missionary in Taipei, Taiwan, I was considered a giant. Everyone knew us as those giant white guys that rode huge bicycles around town.
And oh, did we ride around! Mormon missionaries adhere to extremely regimented schedules: Up by 6:30 AM, studying and preparing until 9:30… then out on the streets riding those giant bicycles around to find and teach people about the church until 9:30 PM. Six days a week. With no access to TV, radio, cell phones, internet, music, dating, or any other “normal” nineteen-year-old activities. In terms of learning, growth, confidence, and maturity, nothing beats paying your own way to serve strangers full-time for two years in a foreign country like you do as a Mormon missionary. Nothing else even comes close.
Or stated differently, what were you doing when you were nineteen?
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