Watching as the Mary-Mae disappeared, bubbling, spitting and groaning into the dark, icy North Sea, he and his 6-man crew clung onto their rudimentary rubber dinghy just long enough for the Whitby lifeboat to show up and tow them back to harbour.

3 weeks later, flushed with an insurance payout, he refused to invest in a shiny new craft.

Instead, he salvaged the scuttled vessel from its current resting place in the shallows, and decided to have a go at patching it back together.

After all, he was a parsimonious Yorkshireman, and “waste-not-want-not” was his by-line for life.

7 months passed, along with all his cash.

He’d laid off his lads, who quickly got jobs with the rest of the fleet, and by the next winter he’d managed to get the old girl back to some kind of ship-shape. Meanwhile, all the other fishermen enjoyed one of their best seasons ever, nets bulging with valuable catch every morning.

Although the Mary-Mae sailed again, uncle had to hire a second-rate crew, the boat was never quite right, and he never recovered from his bad luck.

“WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS, JONNY?”

Here’s why, young seaman/woman…

> The sinking = bad luck
> Uncle not buying a new boat when he could = bad judgement

He’d failed to understand the concept of a sunk cost (literally).

A sunk cost is a sum paid in the past that is no longer relevant to decisions about the future.

And in your 21st century coaching or consultancy business, you have to watch out for sunk costs:

> Sticking with that terrible, half-built website because some charlatan took a ton of cash off you upfront
> Continuing with that ineffectual-but-expensive training course because some charlatan took a ton of cash off you upfront
> Letting your tired, no-longer-ambitious business partner weigh you down like an anchor because of your long-term friendship
> Persevering with that unfathomable, complex, useless software tool because some charlatan sold you a lifetime licence upfront
> Sitting back and waiting for referrals from your carefully-nurtured lifetime network (hint – they don’t care about making you a success)

See the pattern here?

> Your original investment was flawed but excusable – everyone makes mistakes.
> But your decision to continue pouring new time and money into an old mistake is now inexcusable.

Again:

A sunk cost is a sum paid in the past that is no longer relevant to decisions about the future.

Don’t let the misjudgements of your past become the blueprints for your future.

Move on, and get some practice making better decisions.

Love you lots
Jonny

PS: After 8.5 years and 2700 Daily Brain Tattoos, I’ll be changing the rhythm of my emails to you from this month. 

Instead of infiltrating your inbox every morning, I’m launching my Monday Motivator, a weekly word workout packed with marketing magic, money mastery, mindset miracles and any other Ms I can think of.

Yep, I’ll be propelling you into every new week from the 8th December with prose so powerful, you’ll probably want to reread it every day anyway.

Don’t miss me too much, and I’ll see you next Monday…

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

And in your 21st-century coaching or consulting business this means not being:

• Afraid to show up live and authentic on streaming video
• Afraid to speak your truth in a post or article
• Afraid to reach out to someone who looks like an ideal client
• Afraid to launch your programme before it’s ready [it never is!]
• Afraid to ask for high-ticket money for high-ticket impact

Above all, it means understanding what Big Thinking really means.

Accepting that you are capable of truly great things, if only you got out of your own way and allowed yourself to do them.

And asking yourself not, “what’s the worst that could happen?”

But, “what’s the best that could happen?”

Taking relentless action based on the answers to that question is probably the definition of courage in our modern world.

How brave are you?

Love you lots
Jonny

PS: You’re more than likely capable of thriving in corporate wellbeing consulting, but only a lack of knowledge/courage is stopping you. 

You’ll get both by joining CIB Global, the world’s leading community of consultants transforming their fortunes with lucrative corporate engagements.

We’ve opened up a final couple of spots in the community for 2025, and you can find out whether you’re ready right here:

https://bit.ly/cib-form

Click the link and fill it out. Can’t guarantee you a CIB place, but if you submit it before midnight tonight, I’ll send you a complimentary copy of my comprehensive guide called “The Thriving Wellbeing Consultant” as a taster for what lies ahead in 2026…

I got asked that yesterday, by a well-meaning coach who’s already got jingle-bells round her profile pic.

Look, I’m no Scrooge, and am actually quite looking forward to a few days less-than-full-on, but the “ready for Xmas” mindset also breeds a whole bunch of troublesome thinking:

•  “December’s a slow month for business.” Well, it sure is now.
• “Nobody wants to do anything before the New Year.” Not with you, they won’t.
• “I had a record September.” Yeah, that was quite a while back, wasn’t it?
• “It’s a great time to wind down and plan for next year.” Make sure you “plan” to do some business next November and December.
• “People are spending all their money on presents.”  Funny, I’ve never met anyone who did that.

The seasons ebb and flow, I get that.

In fact, round about now is actually when people are most relaxed, happy, and ready to invest into their best year ever.

Don’t miss the Christmas rush!

Love you lots
Jonny

PS: If you’re ready for 2026 to be the year when you finally crack the code of corporate wellbeing consulting, I have a plan for you.

Type “2026 Yea!” in reply to this email and I’ll send you the roadmap. 

Below is one question from the 2-minute quiz she created.

Simply choose which one of the following describes you best:

1: I regularly meet expectations I set for myself, as well as expectations others have of me.
2: I only meet expectations that make sense to me.
3: I am really good about meeting expectations others have of me, but I’m not so great at meeting expectations I set for myself.
4: I don’t like any expectations from anyone, myself or others.

Here’s a link to the full quiz online. 

Try it, and learn some cool new stuff about yourself!

Love you lots
Jonny

FYI – I got REBEL – how about you?

They have a big, expensive problem only you can solve. That’s what makes them ideal for you, and you for them.

And the easiest way to connect with them is to have them find you, instead of you desperately trying to find them.

The art of inbound marketing is often overlooked by coaches and consultants who focus on outbound campaigns of cold messaging, calls and emails.

In CIB, we’ve developed three pillars of inbound marketing:

1: Posting content in groups and communities where your potential clients are, so they see what you do and realise they need you
2: Identifying people you already know within your target organisations and have them introduce you to the decision-makers
3: Partnering with suppliers of connected but non-competing services who already work with your ideal clients

Building your business on those pillars usually means you’ll only ever be having warm conversations, as the first impressions have already been created before any words are exchanged.

Decide who you’re selling to, then stop trying to be everywhere and go hang out where they do.

Love you lots
Jonny

PS: I have two more seats available in the CIB community, where you can join over 60 skilled and experienced wellbeing consultants, building their thriving practices on inbound marketing.

Type “Inbound” in reply to this email and I’ll fire you over some details. 

1: Be kind and pleasant to others
2: Ask for what you want
3: Follow up

In your 21st century coaching or consulting business, the first should be a given, so let’s talk about the other two.

“Asking for what you want” could mean:

• Writing a clear, single call-to-action on any posts where you’re offering something
• Making sure you get paid at the point someone says they want to work with you
• Engaging team members with concise, goal-oriented instructions

And, “Follow-up” includes things like:

• Booking the next call during the call you’re on, if you ever want to speak to them again
• Responding to comments on your posts, so you get to discover more about them
• ‘Walking them to the door’ by sending event and call reminders after they booked

To be Clear (see what I did there?), these are not the only ways to get more of what you want.

But you won’t get much of anything if you ignore them.

Love you lots
Jonny

In their head, they’re listening to an evil monkey whose job it is to sabotage their lives and keep them swimming in the dark pond of mediocrity with everyone else.

So they end up asking for too low a salary or charging fees a fraction of what they could.

The reasons for this strange behaviour are many, and include:

• Not realising how much they know, and how valuable it is to the rest of us
• Comparing themselves to others, whilst ignoring their completely different talents and journeys
• Ignoring positive feedback and focusing only on the naysayers
• Believing they’ve got to prove themselves further before charging or earning top dollar
• Nervous about “blowing the deal” by pricing themselves out of the market

If you’re reading this, I know you’re talented, ambitious, grounded and worth every penny.

Don’t let the evil monkey tell you otherwise.

See you around
Jonny

PS: If you’re in my Everyone Hates Marketing Facebook Group, head over and answer this one fun question.

It’s not some ancient tongue you’ve never heard of, nor some trendy street-talk only practised by hipsters too young to remember Blockbusters.

And it’s definitely not some bullshit techie-jargon, laden with acronyms and word-mangles that leave you feeling like an Amazonian tribesman having Netflix explained for the first time.

No, the secret language you need to learn is much simpler than that.

But without it, you may as well be a hospital porter who’s handed scrubs and invited to do a kidney transplant. You’ll be lost, scared and dangerous.

This mysterious, secret language?

It’s the language of your ideal clients.

• The precise words and phrases they use to describe how they’re feeling right now
• The complaints they murmur every morning about their crappy lives
• Their deeply-held beliefs, biases and misunderstandings
• The hopes and dreams they hold close and private like a kid with a secret crush on her school teacher
• The specific business-speak their colleagues use to communicate with each other

You need to suck it all up, and spit it back at them in every one of your posts, emails and messages. Your banners, headlines and branding need to look like their life story in spirit, form and minute detail.

Get that right, and the very first thing they’ll feel when they come across you is relief.

Maybe joy, gratitude and excitement too.

But mainly relief – that they’ve finally found someone who understands them.

At last, someone talks to them how they talk to themselves. That’s so rare, they’ll start to trust you immediately.

And when that happens, it takes next-to-nothing to get them over the line as a paying client.

See you around
Jonny

PS: Not long to the launch of my all-new course, designed to get you your first (or next) corporate wellbeing consultancy gig within 30 days.

It’s the sum total of everything I know about landing high-ticket clients, and it’ll change your life if you read it and action it.

Type “Big Gigs” in reply to this email and I’ll make sure you’re on the list when it lands in the next few days. 

They bury a banana in a hole just big enough for a monkey to get their hand in, but not big enough to allow the monkey to pull out the banana in their clenched fist.

Lacking the imagination to let go of the banana and scarper to safety, the hapless simian is paralysed and becomes a sitting duck.

So now you know how to turn a monkey into a duck, what does this have to do with your business?

Simple.

Many coaches and consultants also self-sabotage by gripping tightly onto things they really, really should let go of:

• A client who pays too little and demands too much
• A business model that hasn’t worked over years of trying
• A scarcity mindset over money, keeping them poor
• A comfort zone that means they play small, forever
• 1:2:1 client engagements as their only offering
• A partnership where they’re doing all the work

Monkeys can’t read, so I know you’re not a monkey.

So let go of your bananas, and go find freedom in another place.

See you around
Jonny

PS: Not long to the launch of my all-new course, designed to get you your first (or next) corporate wellbeing consultancy gig within 30 days.

It’s the sum total of everything I know about landing high-ticket clients, and it’ll change your life if you read it and action it.

Type “Big Gigs” in reply to this email and I’ll make sure you’re on the list when it lands in the next few days. 

Until it becomes literally unbearable to think your current situation can continue for a moment longer, nothing’s going to change.

I soldiered on for over a decade serving a rag-bag of cynical clients, systematically being overworked and underpaid, day by day.

But I didn’t stop it for years because I was only mildly unfulfilled.

I had a home, a car, the occasional holiday and a positive bank balance.

I brushed my lack of self esteem under the carpet of comfortable mediocrity.

Then one day, I woke up. I looked up at the impact and wealth being created by others at the top of their game. When it hit me how poorly I was living my life, I got fed up. Truly, madly fed up.

I threw everything up in the air, moved my family to a Mediterranean paradise and launched CIB Global. 

18 months in, I’m still fed up.

Just not so much, but it’s what’s driving me to the next level in 2026.

How fed up are you?

See you around,
Jonny

PS: The CIB Oompah-Loompas are putting the finishing touches to our all-new online course called the Corporate Consulting Launch Pack, which will get you your first (or next) lucrative corporate client within 90 days.

I’ll be releasing a few demo versions to waitlist members for test and feedback.

If you’d like one, type “waitlist” in response to this email, and I’ll make sure you’re on the list when it’s ready. 

What they really mean is:

• You haven’t excited me enough yet
• I don’t believe I’ll achieve my dreams if I do this
• Sure I could find the money, but not for you
• I’d be in trouble if I spent money on this
• It sounds ok, but not urgent enough
• I don’t like you enough to trust you
• This is a risk I’m not prepared to take

Trouble is, they rarely say any of that stuff. 

People are too nice to say those things.

So, they tell pretty lies about affordability and budget.

Of course, it’d actually be “nicer” if they just told the truth, because at least you’d learn what needs improving.

So, for now, you’ll have to take it from me:

Nobody has a budget for coaching or consulting.

But everybody has a budget for making their lives easier, improving their reputation, realising their dreams, and making themselves feel loved, happy and respected.

Listen to what they really want, show them how you can provide it, and the budget will appear.

As if by magic. 

See you around,
Jonny

PS: Do you want to be able to open a conversation with any decision-maker, in any organisation which employees people?  

I’ve got an updated version of my tell-all eBook all about why they should invest in employee wellbeing, and how it changes the lives of everyone involved.

Type “Wellbeing” in reply to this email, and you can have a copy, with my compliments.

Here are a few I’ve had recently:

• Would you like to see my new video?
• Are you free on the 2nd?
• Can I share an opportunity with you?
• Do you need any sales staff?
• As we’re in the same business, can we share ideas?

All those met with a polite but terminal NO thanks from me.

Not “contact me in the New Year.”
Not “what’s it about?”
Not “I’m a little busy at the moment”
Not “send it over and I’ll have a look”
And definitely not “please, tell me more”

Putting people on a polite glide-path to a “no” after a bunch of exchanges is just a waste of everyone’s time.

It’s a distraction from your true mission, and will crush your effectiveness and chances of success. If you don’t even have time to say anything, just delete and block. That way you won’t be needlessly distracted by them anymore.

Learning to say NO to 95% of the world RIGHT AWAY gives you plenty of time to work with the remainder.

That’s the 5% YOU choose, not the other way round. 

See you around
Jonny

PS: This week sees the launch of my all-new Corporate Consulting Launch Pack. If you want to be on the VIP list for a first look, type VIP in reply to this email, and I’ll make sure you get the low-down. 

• Dropping a vase
• Website crashing
• Car crashing
• Piano on your foot
• Catching a virus

But how about rejoicing the positive accidents that have you right here, today?

• Your privileged birth
• Your safe, warm environment
• The people all around you
• The skills you can get paid for
• The infinite choices in front of you

Any of those accidents could have had an exponentially worse outcome.

Maybe it’s about time to leverage the opportunities those lovely accidents have created. 

Jonny

PS: My biggest car crash to date was getting t-boned at 140mph by a fellow competitor at Rockingham Motor Speedway in 2004. Truly terrifying, but thankfully I was unscathed. Unlucky, yet lucky at the same time. Here’s the pic.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/t7e9vzmoau4251hjutl56/Skid_Seq_1-8-04_021.jpg?rlkey=vf8dohzmbe3glf2ecgbfvea8u&e=1&dl=0

1: Find more new clients
2: Sell more to existing clients
3: Raise your prices

The third of those is the easiest to implement, and by some margin.

So easy, in fact, that it requires no effort on your part, beyond making the decision.

Here’s why you probably should increase your prices, right now:

• You’re almost certainly undercharging at the moment
• You’ll attract clients where you can have more impact
• You’ll feel better about yourself, getting paid more
• You can do more with your life, with more money
• Your authority, value and reputation will increase

Finally, to bust a common myth:

You won’t find it any harder to make sales when you charge more.

JFDI, I dare you.

See you around
Jonny

PS: Talking of earning more money, it’s boom-time in corporate wellbeing consulting, and you could be part of it with a little tweak to your messaging. 

I’m almost ready to let you have my all-new Corporate Consulting Launch Pack, the ultimate end-to-end guide to winning lucrative corporate engagements.

Type “CCLP” in reply to this email, and I’ll make sure you’re on the VIP list when it’s ready.

The simpler the better, and the easier it is to remember, the more chance you have of sticking to it.

Here’s a daily template for building a 21st century online coaching or consultancy business, which I use and teach.

It’s simple, and easy to remember, so long as you can remember 5-4-3-2-1-0

5 – Invite five new people to join your community or network
4 – Drink four pints of water. Hydration is the ultimate life, health and energy hack
3 – Read three great blogs, articles or book chapters relevant to your business goals
2 – Post twice on your most-engaged social media platforms. Words, images or videos are just fine
1 – Start a conversation with ONE person you haven’t spoken to before and who looks like your next ideal client
0 – While you’re in the flow with any of those things, allow ZERO distractions to take you out of your zone of presence

It’s also a 5-4-3-2-1-0 countdown because when you get to zero, you can pack up and go home.

Or go out, if you’re already home.

See you around
Jonny

PS: It’s boom-time in corporate wellbeing consulting, and you could be part of it with a little tweak to your messaging. 

I’m almost ready to let you have my all-new Corporate Consulting Launch Pack, the ultimate end-to-end guide to winning lucrative corporate engagements.

Type “CCLP” in reply to this email, and I’ll make sure you’re on the VIP list when it’s ready.

“Someone with half your IQ is making 10x more than you because they aren’t smart enough to doubt themselves.”

And when you’re trying to establish your authority as an online personal brand, self-doubt is the ultimate dream killer.

It’ll paralyse you from taking action
When you do take action, it’ll be half-hearted
Your potential clients will feel your under-confidence

So here’s the antidote:

Play dumb.

Pretend you’ve never heard of failure
Be pig-headed enough to ignore your critics
Laugh like a mad-person in the face of anyone who says you’ll never amount to anything.

That’s so stupid, it might just work.

See you around
Jonny

PS: Here’s the ultimate dumb thought – thousands of consultants round the world are earning fortunes from supporting wellbeing in companies and organisations. And they’re no smarter than you are – they just have the key to starting conversations with decision-makers.

It’s boom-time in corporate wellbeing, and you could be part of it with a little tweak to your messaging. 

I’m almost ready to let you have my all-new Corporate Consulting Launch Pack, the ultimate end-to-end guide to winning lucrative corporate engagements.

Type “CCLP” in reply to this email, and I’ll make sure you’re on the VIP list when it’s ready.

That’s given me a ton of feedback into how humans think and behave, and I’ve got a mental shortlist of what makes a successful coach or consultant.

There’s an even longer list of things that block success, and right at the top of the list is a sure-fire dream-killer:

Believing doing the same stuff you’ve always done will take you to new places. 

Because we’re hard-wired to avoid discomfort, trying something new is naturally scary and to-be-avoided.

I get that.

Here are a few behaviours you might need to change if you want to improve your life:

• Saying you’re “not techie” instead of learning to use the essential tools of the 21st century
• Having an ethical objection to sending cold messages because “it’s just not me”
• Looking at people who’ve experienced extreme good luck and assuming it’ll land in your lap too
• Believing money is evil, and rich people must have done something bad to accumulate wealth
• Saying you want to do something, then not being prepared to work to make it happen
• Thinking your fitness/brainpower/stamina will naturally endure from your 30s all the way through middle-age
• Getting a few qualifications and expecting clients to be so impressed they’ll fall into your lap

I could go on, but you get the idea. 

Forging a life of success for yourself means you’ll be breathing rare air, and mixing with uniquely motivated and determined people. You don’t get to join that party with the mindset of an employee.

You have to change how you behave, to change your results.

You might even have to change who you are.

See you around
Jonny

PS: As Robin Sharma says, “All change is difficult at first, messy in the middle and beautiful at the end.”

I’m putting together an all-new mini-course that’ll change your life if you follow it. It’s called the Corporate Consulting Launch Pack, and it’s a simple A-Z guide to helping organisations with employee wellbeing.

Reply with “CCLP” and I’ll make sure you get the details when it’s ready.

Unless you’re selling a commodity or a low-price service where you need a mass-market, success is more about connection quality than quantity.

In your quest for numbers, it’s easy to lose track of what’s really important, like:

• You can only have a handful of best friends, or best clients at any one time
• You have a six-figure business with just ONE £2k sale each week
• Time spent gaining new connections is time wasted unless you’re building relationships with them too
• Nurturing relationships with a few dozen warm prospects will create a tribal flow of user-generated content
• Social platforms will penalise you with poor reach, if you build follower numbers without real engagement

Focus on nurturing relationships with the people who already know you, before you go off hunting for newbies.

Of course, you need a CERTAIN number of followers before any magic starts to happen, but it’s nowhere near as big as you think.

Not even close.

See you around
Jonny

PS: Back from the UK after a few days racing round in circles, turning money into noise.

To celebrate my return to my home rock, I’ll send you a complimentary copy of my bestselling book “Jonny Hates Marketing” if you’re one of the first five to reply to this email with “JHM”. 

And they wear their reading list as a badge of honour, like the more they read, the smarter they’re becoming.

That’s only partly true, and only sometimes.

There’s no optimum number of books to read, but maximising the returns on the time you spend doing it is essential.

Here’s my 3-point plan for getting more out of your literary consumption:

1: Only read books you need to read. Identify a skills, knowledge or entertainment gap and use a book to fill it.

2: Read without going back. Re-reading kills the absorption of information and slows you down like crazy.

3: Pause at the end of each chapter and write a two-line summary from memory in your journal. You’ll create a mini-reference work to look back on

Since I’ve been following those steps, my actual book numbers have fallen, but I’ve had some stupendous revelations from the ones I’ve read.

Try it, and let me know how you get on. 

See you around
Jonny

PS: You could always get ChatGPT to summarise the book for you, but that kinda misses the point, IMO…

• A therapist who paid $15,000 to a YouTube ads specialist when she has no clue about her ICA or her offer
• A life coach who gave $16,000 to an “influencer” coach to learn marketing directly from her, then got fobbed off to a junior team member
• An NLP practitioner paying £3,000 a month in FB ads costs and management to a firm who have no idea what NLP even is
• A coach being told they weren’t doing the work properly after getting nothing out of a $10,000 training programme
• Another therapist being told she’d be “dumb” not to take out a loan to cover the cost of an expensive marketing programme

Here are three questions to help you avoid the worst of the online marketing training industry:

1: Is the person behind the course/programme actually delivering it?

2: Are they showing you something they are using in their own business, right now?

3: Are their values, ethos and demeanour something you aspire to yourself?

If the answer to any of the above is, well, no…a polite decline is probably your best option.

Also, I’m here if you need to talk.

See you around
Jonny

That’s when you allow yourself to be sidetracked, diverted and confused by spending your time on lots of different things.

Here’s the power you’re giving away when that happens:

• You’ll get overwhelmed and exhausted
• You’ll miss out on the chance to become an authority with your core skill
• Your ideal clients won’t recognise you in all the fog you’ve created
• You’ll dilute your earnings by dabbling in diverse pools
• You’ll do NO things as well as if you focused on ONE thing

There’s nothing shiny about that squirrel.

He’s a dark, evil, bushy-tailed monster. 

See you around
Jonny

PS: I’ll be in Milton Keynes Thursday 23rd afternoon for a few hours if you want to meet for real. Ping me a note and we’ll fix it up

Thomas Edison had a meticulously-designed lab in New Jersey where he invented and developed world-changing technologies and products.

Rudyard Kipling sought out a perfect sanctuary in Suffolk where he could quietly go about his peerless creation.

Google leads the way with inspirational campus-style workspaces that bring out the best in their employees.

Here’s a checklist to see how your environment might be holding you back:

• Can you see the daylight from your desk? You should.
• How many plants (Real, live ones) in your workspace? More than none is good.
• How many monitors? If you do most of your work online, three is the optimum for productivity.
• Whiteboard? Essential for doodles, notes and goal setting in plain view.
• Standing or sitting desk? Try standing, at least for phone or video calls. It’ll boost your power and impact
• Distractions?  If you operate from home, set clear family boundaries. When you’re at work, you’re at work.
• Clutter? Clear that desk! There’s no excuse for for piles of papers, staplers, plates and cups.
• Flaky internet or phone signal? Do whatever it takes to sort it out.

Find your sanctuary, clear your mind, do your great work.

See you around,
Jonny

PS: I’ll be in Milton Keynes Thursday 23rd afternoon for a few hours if you want to meet for real. Ping me a note and we’ll fix it up

• Morning stretches
• Conscious breathing
• 20-minute jog
• Meditation
• Gratitude journal
• Super-hydration

Awesome. Well done.

I know this lady quite well, so I also know she’s not making any money to speak of.

She stumbles over a client here and there, yet always undercharges them. Then she spends what she gets, way before the end of the month.

All that feelgood stuff is nothing more than a solid foundation, clearly.

But imagine how great she’d feel if she got up in the morning and asked ONE question before she did anything else: 

“Who can I talk to today who’s most likely to pay me to help them, today?”

That’s your golden question, right there.

Try it, and let me know how it works out. 

See you around
Jonny

PS: I’m in the East Midlands of England next Thursday the 23rd October, and have a few hours during the day when we could meet for a coffee. Reply to this email if you could be local, and we can fix something up. 

1: You have enough money to meet all your needs and desires
2: You have a circle of friends and family who love, like and respect you
3: Your health and mobility don’t restrict you from doing anything you want to do
4: You have daily goals and long-term ambitions that keep your brain active and motivated
5: You can look back on your life so far and feel a sense of pride and fulfilment with your achievements

If any of those feel a bit loose right now, maybe you’ve engrained some of these unhelpful habits:

• Over-planning and underdoing – action beats thoughts
• Taking without giving back – try giving first
• Waiting for perfection – great is good enough
• Eating poorly – there’s enough excellent food around
• Sleeping badly – you know where your bed is
• Travelling to work – home office = smart
• Stopping before you’re done – you’re closer than you think
• emailing instead of talking – conversations are what get you paid
• Dealing with idiots – they’ll beat you with experience
• Settling for average – unless you want an average life
• You’re desperate for money – that mindset will keep you poor
• You never start conversations with strangers – it’s magic for the soul
• Sitting down all day – it’s a modern invention that’s killing you
• Believing you’ll never “make it” – you’ll prove yourself right
• Scrolling social media – I mean, c’mon. Really??!!

There’s no ONE secret to success.

It’s the accumulation of small, smart actions, leveraging your skills and experience to create your best life.

And that’s all any of us can do.

What’s your best habit?

See you around
Jonny

I know you have it in you, and I want to help bring it out. I want your last day on earth to be a calm and proud retrospective of how you reached your full potential.

It’s clear that great people build great legacies by continually learning, growing, and evolving.

And, by questioning themselves, relentlessly.

Here are ten to get you started:

1: How important and useful am I to others?

2: What kind of people could benefit the most from what I do?

3: What one new thing can I learn today?

4: What’s a simple act of kindness I can do today?

5: How well did I sleep last night?

6: What’s my exercise and strength-building plan today?

7: How healthy is the food on my table today?

8: Who’s one person I can start a new conversation with today?

9: What should I do more of, from now?

10: What should I stop doing, forever?

I test myself continually with those 10, and more.

Try them yourself and you’ll be on your way to that great life. 

See you around
Jonny

PS: Bonus Question #11: How can I work towards landing lucrative corporate engagements, working less and earning more? 

Type “Corporate” in reply to this email and I’ll send you an eBook packed with all the answers. 

Corporate sales are not effortless. Heck, no sales ever are.

But there is a huge time-and-energy-saving process I’ve used since i realised I’d been chasing my tail way too much.

When you’re selling a service you think needs a “presentation” or a “proposal”, it’s very easy to get caught up in the mechanics of the process – the PowerPoint, the PDFs, the laptop and cables – and forget the only important part: making the bloody sale.

If you were to reverse-engineer a successful sale to a corporate employee, here’s what it would look like, most of the time:

• You started off by confirming they had the sole capacity and authority to make the buying decision. If not, who else is involved?
• You asked them to describe their biggest challenges, knowing you’ll be able to solve them
• You didn’t forget to ascertain that their financial means were aligned with the cost of your offering
• You used trial closes throughout – eg – “If I can solve those problems within your budget, is there any reason we can’t be getting this set up straightaway?”
• You got as much commitment as possible on the first call or meeting, even asking them to buy right there and then
• You avoided mailing out lengthy follow-ups or proposals (they never read them) and instead arranged a second face-to-face to bring the deal home

And guess what happened next?

They bought!

The biggest block to corporate sales success is not a lack of desire, budget or time.

It’s the lack of a clear, hand-holding process from you, the salesperson.

Nail that, and you open the door to all kinds of abundance.

See you around,
Jonny

PS: I’m in the Midlands of the UK for a few days from the 21st – 25th October, doing some motorsport and some business. If you fancy a meet for real, I’m currently planning my schedule in detail. Reply with “meet-up!” and I’ll reach to see if we can fix something.

Impostor syndrome is like an alien being living rent-free in your consciousness.

Writer Tim Denning talks about how to kick out the unwelcome guest, for good:

1: Create evidence of your abilities – every little triumph should be celebrated

2: Keep taking action – self doubt can’t creep in when you’re usefully busy

3: Think what you used to be like – you’ve come a long way, baby!

4: Be kinder to yourself – slack can always be cut.

5: Stop imagining future scenarios – that’s called worrying.

6: Remember you’ll learn and grow – even from the worst that happens.

This crazy person who’s talking you down has no place in your life.

Just tell them you don’t hang around with the likes of them. 

See you around
Jonny

PS: I’m cooking up something big for the start of next month. It’s called the Corporate Consulting Launch Pack, and it’s the A-Z blueprint for everything you need to do to win your first lucrative corporate engagement. It’s priced so you can afford it, and you won’t want to miss it.

Reply with “CCLP” and I’ll make sure you get a personal note from me when it’s ready

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

And in your 21st century coaching or consulting business, there’s nothing like solid masterminding and collaboration with your peers to accelerate progress.

We have a weekly live meet-up for the CIB community, and every time one of the CIBlings talks about a project, prospect or client, at least one (usually more) of the others jumps in with an idea:

• Why don’t you ask them this?
• Let me share my take on it
• I have a doc that might be useful
• This is what I did in your situation
• Let’s have a chat about this

You can trigger this kind of interaction yourself right now. 

Take a look round your network today and identify five people doing work where you might be able to help.

Reach out to them and say, hey, I might have an idea for you. Let’s jump on a quick call and see if I can share anything useful.

On the call, make sure to mention what you’re working on too, and ask for their take.

You’ll come away with at least one more idea each, almost out of nowhere. 

See you around,
Jonny

PS: I’m cooking up something big for the start of next month. It’s called the Corporate Consulting Launch Pack, and it’s the A-Z blueprint for everything you need to do to win your first lucrative corporate engagement. It’s priced so you can afford it, and you won’t want to miss it.

Reply with “CCLP” and I’ll make sure you get a personal note from me when it’s ready

Time is a finite resource, whereas money is an infinite resource.

Therefore, it makes no sense to exchange something in short supply for something which will never, ever run out.

Also, as we’ve all got access to approximately 86,400 seconds each day, who are you to tell me your time is worth more than mine? Or less?

No, the grown-up, fair and reasonable way to get paid for what you do is this:

Charge for the value you provide to the person who is paying you. 

• If you’re a heart surgeon who just saved my life, you’re pretty valuable to me right now
• If you’re a financial adviser who just put me on the path to a comfortable retirement, I value that highly too
• If you’re a business coach who’s spent the last 25 years learning how to supercharge my success, I’ll pay you a big chunk to show me that

And when you allow us to pay you for the value you give us, the more value you give, the more we will pay you.

Today’s three-part success blueprint:

1: Solve a big expensive problem for us

2: Get really good at doing it

3: Charge us what that’s worth

And the other great news with that approach?

You can do this for multiple clients simultaneously, as you haven’t sold your time to anyone. 

See you around
Jonny

PS: I’m cooking up something big for the start of next month. It’s called the Corporate Consulting Launch Pack, and it’s the A-Z blueprint for everything you need to do to win your first lucrative corporate engagement. It’s priced so you can afford it, and you won’t want to miss it.

Reply with “CCLP” and I’ll make sure you get a personal note from me when it’s ready. 

“Don’t join an easy crowd; you won’t grow. Go where the expectations and the demands to perform are high.”

And that can be tough. It might hurt our feelings.

It’s way more comfortable to network, collaborate, and even partner with those a few steps behind us.

There’s no risk of being challenged, or worse.

Being “found out”.

Well, here’s the news:

Having someone call you out on your strategy, your process, and your business ideas is no bad thing, right?

In fact, the easy way to upscale your life is to upscale your relationships.

Surround yourself with people who remind you of your future, not your past.