Modern Jedi NLP Mind Mastery

Posts Tagged ‘neuro linguistic programming’

If there was a way for you to

• Defeat the Dark Side in your personal and professional life and
  

• Master your mind for a change

• That took only 17 minutes a day

• And cost less than lunch at McDonalds

Would you be interested or not?

Watch this video and let me know!

I need to know because I’ve re-invented my Modern Jedi NLP Certification Training. I’ve redesigned it so that you can get the massive benefits of applying Modern Jedi Mind mastery to the challenges in your life or work without having to invest a huge chunk of time or a huge chunk of money.

The new multi-media online course will be delivered to you in easily digestible bites each week so you can learn from the comfort of your own home.

And right now you can’t even sign up yet.

I just need a show of hands so I have an idea of how many of you are interested in defeating the dark side in your life or work and mastering your mind for a change

I’m still working out the logistics so I just need to know if you’re interested.

So if you’re interested just leave a comment below or e-mail me at modernjedi[at]gmail.com you can even call me personally at 203-495-8808.

I know you’re wondering what the details are and that’s a good thing!

Learn More about the Modern Jedi Online NLP Training and Join Us!

The Following Post is written by Emily Bernard describing her experience working with me in a Personal Breakthrough Session with the intention of clearing her PTSD and anxiety about public places.

Mark Shepard is very tall. His height is the first thing I notice about him when I open the door to let him in. The second thing is his demeanor, which is kind, gentle, and warm. He has a youthful, eager way about him. His smile says, “This is as much of an adventure for me as it is for you.”

When I called Mark, I was ready. I had arrived in New Haven in July 2008 in order to begin a fellowship at Yale. Within four weeks, I was in Yale-New Haven hospital. The doctors determined I had a bowel obstruction–my second in seven years–and scheduled me for surgery. I was lucky–my intestines somehow untangled themselves from the mass of scar tissue inside my abdomen. After a week’s stay, I was allowed to leave.

This was my second visit to Yale-New Haven. Fifteen years ago, I was stabbed in the gut by a stranger in a coffee shop. The perpetrator was sick with mental illness. He was hospitalized; everyone involved survived.

For fifteen years, I have been unable to get past certain fears associated with being in public and interacting with strangers. After one of my doctors informed me that I was just “one of those unfortunates,” people who “over heal,” or make too much scar tissue, I decided to do whatever I could to turn my fears and luck around.

Medical doctors told me there was nothing to be done; psychotherapy didn’t seem to be helping. I decided to look beyond traditional doctor’s offices for solutions.

Enter Mark Shepard.

For our first session, Mark agreed to come to my house. His generosity put me at ease, and made it that much more possible for me to take the leap into the unknown world of hypnosis. At that point, all I knew about hypnosis I had read about in books. Mark was recommended to me by a massage therapist who herself had yet to try hypnosis. “When I’m ready, Mark Shepard is the one I will go to.” That was enough for me.

Mark and I first spoke on the phone. He was friendly, prompt, and direct. I liked him immediately. He sent me some literature to help me get acquainted with hypnosis, the unconscious mind, and his methods. There were questionnaires to fill out, and homework to prepare so that Mark could come to know more intimately the kinds of struggles that had led me to hypnosis in the first place.

I liked the questionnaires and the homework. I see them as the first stage in the process of the work I am doing with Mark. They force you to articulate your problems, fears, and goals. They help you focus, and they all center around the issue of “change.” What Mark does has psychological components, but it is not psychotherapy. He gets you to identify the root of a problem, but also the role you have played in either creating the problem or contributing to its survival. The work is goal-oriented. It takes faith, work, and openness. I believe it is a process–one, for me, that has only begun.

Thanks to Emily’s willingness to share her process, you will be able to get a sense of how I do what I do to help people clear fears, phobias, anxiety, PTSD and other Mind/Body challenges. Look for Part 2 next…

Are You A Victim or Are You A Volunteer?

This video by Robert Smith does an absolutely fabulous job of explaining how we create our pain and problems as well as how we explain our screwed-up-ness to ourselves and how we maintain it.

Please watch this carefully and take notes. Let me know your thoughts. – Mark

This video is just awesome. Let me know what your best failure was in the comments below!

Okay, I’ll go first. My Biggest Failure?

Bought 4 houses for nothing down at the top of the 1980’s real estate bubble. Ended up losing everything. Declared bankruptcy. Got evicted. When all my grand schemes went poof! I ended up doing kids music for local nursery schools for $75 bucks an hour. That led to school performances and adding storytelling…created my DrumSongStory programs…which are keeping me going during this little economic “challenge” we’re having now.

Your turn!

My Dad forwarded an e-mail to me today with an article from the Health Sciences Institute News letter. It was a story about a panic attack sufferer who got a major amount of relief by taking a supplement called Inositol (a natural substance found in the human body). Interestingly, she also used a specific mind control technique to take command of her thoughts.

“I came to realize the panic attacks were not uncontrollable once I understood how they started and grew. I was basically creating my own panic by bouncing back and forth between past guilts and fears, to future non-existent terrors. Back and forth, again and again.

“Now I anchor myself in the present. I force myself to think about what I’m saying, force myself to stop recalling past ‘nasties’ and force myself to stop imagining them as even nastier future outcomes. I stay right here, right now, in the present. It takes determination and effort, but it works.”

Read the Full Health Sciences Institute News Letter Article

In my experience the more tools you have at your disposal the greater your chances of drug free relief. If a small dose of a supplement can help I’m not against it. I am against the pattern in our culture of treating the symptom but doing nothing for the cause.

The work I do with clients one on one and in my “Crush Anxiety” calls is all about clearing the root cause and having a full arsenal of easy to use tools to master your mind for a change. Using the NLP and Time Line Therapy™ processes I teach as well as Self Hypnosis and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) it is often possible to eliminate phobias, anxiety and panic attacks in a very short period of time. Everything I do is designed to put the client in a place of power where you are in charge of your own mind. Another point I want to make is that by working with your unconscious mind instead of fighting it, you don’t have to necessarily use “force” to control your mind.

A recent example of this is the client I worked with on Friday. Emily had been physically attacked in a public place some 14 years ago and up until Friday, whenever she went anywhere she fully expected to be attacked and hurt. Here’s the voice mail message she left me a day later:

“I feel great! I walked to the bank today and had no feeling of fear about getting shot. And I owe this to you. The old pattern is just a distant memory. I’m feeling really excellent and really happy.”

Notice she did not say, that as she walked to the bank she forced herself to think positive thoughts. The changes we make sometimes require conscious awareness but almost never “force”. The beauty of NLP and hypnosis is that once the changes are made on the unconscious level things just become different.

BTW Emily and I had a great time doing her foundation breakthrough session from 10 am-4 pm. The way i work is relaxed and safe. She has agreed to write about her experiences working with me so watch for a several part article by her in the near future.

If you or someone you know needs help with panic attacks, anxiety, phobias, self sabotage, procrastination, PTSD etc. I can be contacted at: mark[at]markshepard.com or 203-495-8808.

I’m also doing two “Crush Anxiety” teleseminars this week Wednesday at Noon and Thursday Evening at 7:00 pm US Eastern Time

The cost is $97 and comes with my “Crush Anxiety” e-book and audio series. There are also a few scholarships available so please contact me by phone or e-mail if cost is an issue for you.

Register for this month’s CRUSH Anxiety Call
Wednesday, March 11 at Noon Eastern Time

or

Thursday Night, March 12 at 7:00 pm Eastern Time

For a one time fee of only $97 you get to work with me over the phone in a small group as well as get my Crush Anxiety E-book and complete audio set as my gift ($197 value). If you’ve been on one of these calls before you are welcome to come back any time or as many times as you want for free. Lines are limited so register now.

Courage!

Mark

p.s. If you or someone you love is suffering from phobia, anxiety, or panic attacks please stop waiting to contact me. In light of our economic crisis I am willing to consider payment plans, barter or any other creative way to value the help I offer and create a fair exchange that is a win/win for both of us.

E-mail: mark[at]markshepard.com

Telephone: 203-495-8808

For many of us out here on the front lines of entrepreneurship, there is one constant that either makes us or breaks us…

And that’s US!

As cartoon strip character Pogo said many years ago “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

Ultimately, wherever we are is the result of our thoughts, beliefs, values, decisions, and actions (BTW “inaction” is actually the action of not doing anything).

Since NLP provides us with easy to use maps for recognizing and changing our own blocks, patterns, behaviors, fears etc. it makes a great tool for business people. What I love about folks in business is that they “get” that if something is costing them, they have to change it.

My business clients “get” that if they spend $100 dollars to clear something that’s holding them back and hurting their company or their success and they make an additional $100 dollars, then it wasn’t a “cost” it was an investment that just paid for itself. If that $100 investment brings a return of $200 or $1,000 then it is a “no-brainer”.

Typically, I find that when people clear the block that has held them back they go on to exponentially increase their income and their effectiveness as leaders in their respective fields.

Two examples that come to mind of people who have made revolutionary change in their lives as the result of learning NLP are Michael Guerin and Rob Bronson.

Michael has been kind enough to share his story with my readers on a number of occasions as well as on the phone and in an extensive video interview.

The bottom line for Mike is that before he worked with me he could barely use the phone. He literally had a phone phobia. He also suffered from agoraphobia so basically, he couldn’t get out and meet and greet new clients and he couldn’t call prospects on the phone! Not a recipe for success in business! We did my basic NLP breakthrough process and within hours he was on fire! As he said in his interview with me, “It was really strange because it was like the old pattern was just gone! As if it had never existed in the first place…”

Mike has gone on to increase his Credit Card Merchant Processing business so much that he is now training other associates to work for him. He has also expanded into helping other business owners make sense of online interactive marketing. In this severe economic climate Michael Guerin’s businesses are thriving and growing by leaps and bounds. That’s the power of NLP to help us get out of our own way.

Which brings me to Rob Bronson. Rob is my good friend and technical adviser. This blog format and all the videos I’ve been doing is the direct result of Rob using my own NLP stuff on ME! I had a lot of technological RESISTANCE. which Rob helped me to release!

I first got to know Rob when he took my “Reluctant Sales Person” training a couple of years ago. And immediately started implementing the tools and techniques he’d learned there. As a genius level technical guy, Rob had a little trouble relating to the rest of us non-geek types. Through the NLP sales training he learned how to speak another person’s language and how to communicate the way other people preferred to communicate so that he could maintain rapport and get his message through in a way that could be well received.

Rob learned how to get out of his own world and to enter into the world of his client.

A year ago Rob and Mike and I began to meet every Monday in a “Master Mind”. We would frequently spend the entire day learning about internet marketing and search engine optimization, blogging, copy writing and basic business tools, techniques and philosophy. We also continually put NLP into practice and shared our successes and challenges. We supported each other and acted as sounding boards for each other. Personally it saved my business and my sanity on a number of occasions.

At one point Mike did not even have his own website up. At one point Rob was living in someone’s basement. At several points, I was tangled up in my own “stuff” and they helped “coach” me through the tunnel and out to the sunlight.BTW we all need the help of other people. NLP does not make anyone invincible or perfect.

It was a year of stripping the paint down to the surface and sanding and honing ourselves. and then as the financial storm clouds gathered back in the fall of 2008 something magical happened, Rob and Mike began to form a partnership that was all about helping other people in business save time and money and benefit from what they had learned and put into practice…

Now with their new business Best Web Presence they are so busy I haven’t seen them in weeks. They are signing up clients left and right at a time when there are thousands of “Chicken Littles” running around screeching “The sky is falling! The sky is falling.”

The point of my story is that there is a set of tools and techniques that if used properly will enable you to clear through the clutter of your own thinking and patterns of behavior. Once you clear the personal blocks that are holding you back, fasten your seat belt because things can change rather quickly. At this time last year neither Rob, nor Mike nor I knew how far we would have journeyed from where we began. It truly has “turned out better than they could possibly imagine…”

Does rapid change seem to be pretty scary to a lot of folks? Sure. But that’s a subject for another post…

If you are curious about how NLP can help your business please call me at 203-804-1208 or e-mail me mark [at] markshepard.com. You can also learn more about NLP Certification here

Please share this post with anyone you know who may be struggling with their business or who may be ready to break through the blocks and experience more success.

- Mark Shepard, NLP Trainer, Songwriter, Visual Artist, Author, Speaker…

One of the major techniques of NLP is something called reframing. Essentially it is a way to take any limiting belief or behavioral pattern and turn it around in such a way that the persone either has an “aha” moment or it causes the problem to disappear entirely.

The reason reframing can be so powerful is that few people are aware of how strongly language affects our experience of what we call “reality”. By changing the “frame” around a problem it doesn’t just give you a new perspective (although that’s certainly part of it), it can actually make a profound and observable neurological shift.

I had done a series on NLP reframing in my newsletter sometime last year and it was picked up on by a couple of guys in Ohio, Aaron Torres and Paul Binkley who have been learning NLP on their own and practicing it’s applications at the auto factory they work in.

I hadn’t heard from these guys for a while and was delighted to get an e-mail from Paul Binkley with another great story. So here it is in it’s entirely with Paul’s permission. Thank you Paul! I definitely look forward to doing an NLP Certification in Ohio soon!

Please note: I’ve added a few comments in red to give you a little insight into what Paul is doing outside of conscious awareness.

Mark,
Long time no see. Thanks for the ongoing email and updates about your work.

I had an opportunity this week to help a coworker reframe a major life circumstance. and I thought you would like to hear about it, partly because it is a success story of mind over matter and because I had the presence of mind to offer it, in part, because of your invaluable contribution to my own perspectives on life, the universe, and everything.

A female coworker, 33yrs old apx., confided in me how angry she was that her mother, whom she asked to watch her dogs while she was away for the day, upset her greatly for about the millionth time over the same issue of playing favorites among her three daughters.

It seems that my coworker had left $30 for her mother to order her favorite pizza with everything on it while she watched the dogs at her (my coworkers) house.

Her mother, not wanting to spend the day alone, invited her favorite daughter over to her not so favorite daughters (my coworker) house, to keep her company.

This is where the problem begins.

The mother, desiring to bless her favorite daughter, gave the $30 to her favorite daughter instead of buying her favorite pizza for herself.

My coworker on hearing this, was outraged.

She went on to present to me all manor of evidences supporting her claim that her sister is her mothers favorite child ( they were many and convincing proofs). We often have major amounts of “evidence” for why a certain belief or perception is true. And then started telling how her sister (the favored) was totally dependent on their mother for everything and made no effort to have a life outside of her dependency on their mother, and how her mother was also equally her mothers ( my coworkers grandmother) favorite and just as insanely dependent on her to do everything for her.

She went on to explain how her mother does nothing for her own benefit to a point of serious health risk from obesity, attributing this to her dependency on her mother.

She nearly cried while confiding that her mother, during a day long visit on Christmas day, had not used the restroom all day and stank of urine.

When her mother got up to get something to eat, my coworker noticed a folded towel on her mothers chair, which she first mistook as an added padding then, on inspection, realized her mother had urinated on the folded towel.

The thought that her mother would employ such a method to circumvent needing to visit the restroom, grieved my coworker profoundly. I would like to mention that her mother is not reported to have any health condition relating to bladder control.

Harder to believe than the above:

Here’s the underlying Limiting Decision:
My coworker admits that her own sense of self worth, her practiced state of mind, is dominated by her interpretation that she is less of a person because she is not her mothers favorite.

Here’s what she’s not seeing about herself. This is currently outside of her conscious awareness:
My coworker is about the hardest working, self-sufficient, commonsense, take care of business person I work with (outside of Aaron Torres of course). She is nothing like her mother or her sister or her grandmother.

Here Paul is associating her into the problem in order to “light up the neurological net”:
I asked her to imagine what her life would be like she were her mother’s favorite. She couldn’t do it.

I suggested she(if she were the favorite) would be as pitifully helpless as her sister. How would she like that?

She convulsed with disgust at the thought. The fact that she convulsed with disgust at the thought is proof that she is indeed associated into that experience. When we say “associated” we mean that the person is looking through their own eyes in their internal representation of the situation. they are “in” it.

I told her that the next time her mother favors her sister over her she should thank God that she is not under the generational curse of being mothers favorite.

“I never thought of it that way” she said. Exactly!

I went on to thank God out loud ) quite loudly) right there on the spot that she was not her mothers favorite(note the embedded message). Paul is also using this person’s model of the world. If he was talking to an atheist or a new ager he might not thank God he might say it in a different way. For the Atheist he might say “Thank Goodness!” for the spiritual but not religious peron he might say “Thank the Universe.” It’s all about speaking the language of the person you’re working with

The grimace she had been wearing all day turned to a beaming smile. The great thing about NLP is using our sensory acuity skills we can actually look at another person and see the shift. In other words we can get immediate feedback as to whether something worked or not. Sometimes it’s a subtle color shift other times it’s pretty noticeable. If we get the shift great! if we don’t get the shift, “there’s no failure, there’s only feedback” and we simply try a different approach.

I reiterated the suggestion to say out loud to herself how thankful she is to not be the favorite, next time she recognizes the hideous manifestation of favoritism disease. Speaking the phrase out loud creates an auditory and physiological anchor so that the shift can be “locked in” to her neurology and made available for re-triggering the new insight whenever it’s reinforcement is needed. Also, labeling the old problem as “Favoritism disease” links the old thought pattern in a powerful way to a disease which locks in an “away from” strategy unconsciously.

She said she would.

God bless,
Paul

special thanks to Paul Binkley for sharing this story! Any other examples out there of powerful reframes? ether leave a comment here or e-mail me directly with your own stories and experiences at mark [at] markshepard.com

Please “Digg” or “Stumble” or “Facebook” or “Twitter” this! Thanks!

Mark

p.s. to learn more about NLP and how you can use it to “reframe” your own “problems” into “opportunities” visit Modern Jedi NLP Training

An old Zen Koan or story:

There was a farmer who had a beautiful Mare. One day the he she got loose and ran away with a herd of wild horses.

The farmer’s neighbor said “Oh. What bad luck!” To which the farmer replied. “Good luck? Bad luck?”

Some time passed.

One day the mare returned and it soon became clear that she was going to give birth to a foal.

The Neighbor said, “Oh What good luck!” To which the farmer replied. “Good luck? Bad luck?”

The mare gave birth to a strong colt and the colt grew fast.

Some time passed and the colt was ready to be trained. The Farmer’s son began to train the colt and one day fell off and broke his leg.

The Neighbor said, “Oh what bad luck!” To which the farmer replied “Good luck? Bad luck?”

Some time passed.

There was a war and the army came around looking for young men to be soldiers. Because the Farmer’s son had broken his leg and walked now with a bad limp, he was not taken to fight.

Good luck? Bad luck?

Whatever happens in our lives we are the one’s who decide what it means.Often the very things that seem like the worst things turn out to lead us or push us to where we most need to go.

If you are overworked and overwhelmed in your business it could be the best thing that ever happened to you if you consider that it might be a message to approach things differently.

To find out how you can get high quality help with no financial outlay join me on an informational call Wednesday, January 14th at Noon Eastern time. I will be interviewing Michelle Demers and Julie Braun of www.SuperInterns.com to find out how they use college interns to literally run their businesses and how you can too.

Register for the Noon call here (it’s FREE!)

If you can’t make that call they will be doing another one at 7:00 pm eastern the same day, Wednesday, January 14th

Register for the evening call here (it’s FREE)

Remember every challenge carries with it the seeds for even greater success! Good luck? Bad luck? Only you decide!

Please leave a comment below or share this post with someone who may need to hear it’s message today!

Thanks!

- Mark

What is The Biggest, Huge-est, Most GIGANTIC Mistake Business Owners Make?

• It’s not about having an inferior product or too much competition.
• It’s not having too little capital
• It’s not having some wacky idea that no one wants and then trying to get every friend relative and innocent passerby to “drink the kool-aid”.
• It’s not having a great idea that people don’t “get” or a great idea that’s ahead of it’s time.
• It has nothing to do with how smart or creative you are.
• It’s not starting a business with absolutely no clue how to sell (although that’s a biggie and if selling is a problem for you check out www.ReluctantSales.com )
• It’s not any of the dozens of personal and professional challenges most self employed entrepreneurial types struggle with.

The Biggest, Huge-est, Most GIGANTIC Mistake Business Owners Make is simply this:

Trying to do everything. Not knowing how to delegate. Not having systems in place so that other people can do the things you are not good at. Spending precious time on tasks and projects that could be delegated instead of focusing your energy on what you do best and on what brings in the money.

When you try to do everything in your business you are bound to fail. Even the smallest business is a ravenous, many headed serpent that one person can never hope to keep fed.

Note: Even though a key concept of NLP is that “there is no failure only feedback”. In Business, the “feedback” of less money coming in than going out or of the owner rushing around from dawn until the “wee hours” can only go on for so long until something has to change. Either

• the business ceases to exist due to lack of money or
• the business owner gets totally exhausted, burned out or sick or
• the business owner finally wakes up and does something different.

We also have a saying in NLP: “The most flexible communicator controls the system.” As the owner of a business (even if you are a Reiki master if you are working with clients you are a business owner), it is your communication to yourself, your clients and the people who work in and with your business that must lead and control the direction of your enterprise…(beam me up Scotty! I just wanted to help people!)

Here’s the catch 22!

When you are starting a business on a shoestring and a prayer, how do you get the kind of help that can enable you to grow your business if you have no extra wads of cash laying around?

You need the help to grow your business but you can’t pay for the help until your business grows! Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place! (In NLP We call it a “double bind”)

Can i share a personal example?

Last year. September of 2007 this idea hit me really hard between the eyes and it wasn’t pretty. For 25 years I’ve been self employed and always struggling. In retrospect I was close to major success and breakthroughs several times but I literally got worn out and burned out to the point where I just couldn’t personally sustain things and then it would all fall apart. Then I would give up in disgust and go start a different business from scratch and make the same mistake all over again.

July of 2007 I taught my first full blown NLP practitioner certification training to a small group of students. It was great! I loved teaching the class. I loved sharing the powerful life changing concepts of NLP and Hypnosis and  Time Line Therapy™ but the gargantuan effort of preparing for the class, creating workbooks, cd sets and ordering all the other supplies and finding a place to have the training and getting the students in the seats and all the registration procedures and then correcting the exams and creating certifications and sending them out and then preparing the Master Practitioner level program and teaching that one weekend a month in addition to performing and booking all my own gigs and cleaning my house and seeing private clients and going to networking meetings and taking courses on how to do all this stuff better…

left me…

totally…

and…

completely…

exhausted…

and while I was so busy doing all of that stuff. I didn’t always have time to keep an eye on the bottom line and so all of a sudden even though I was working my brains out…I was out of cash flow….oops! (

Does any of this ring a bell with any of you out there? Are you getting the picture? Can you grasp my concept here?

I mean you can have all the Modern Jedi Mind Mastery training in the world, but if you try to run a business, any business, all by yourself you will eventually crash and burn….

Yup. I know what I’m tawking about…uh huh and it ain’t pretty…

Now, there is no failure. There really is only feedback and so we “passionate ones” pick our selves up off the ground and dust our selves off and start asking ourselves some really good (if hard) questions.

Like “What is the weakest link in my business?”

“Oh… Shit.

It’s………………

…………………………………………….ME!”

Now stay with me here because I will get you to a powerful solution and it’s going to solve a bunch of your challenges all at once.

So last year, I started a master mind group. Michael Guerin and Rob Bronson were the charter members and we began meeting every Monday just to run ideas by each other and to challenge and support each other and to learn with each other and to help each other see the stuff that we were too close to see in our own businesses.

And it made a huge difference. It was the first time in 25 years that I wasn’t alone trying to figure stuff out. I had a team.

For example: At one point Rob Bronson “pushed” me kicking and whining and complaining to move all of my websites to GoDaddy.com and saved me $6,000 per year. At one point I pushed Michael Guerin repeatedly until he fired his web designer and started taking charge of his online marketing. Mike and I “pushed” Rob Bronson to get his butt out of a really negative situation in his life and business and on and on and on…

So at some point you must form your own Jedi Council or Master Mind Group.

This was so cool that I started inviting some other people to join us and one of them was this amazing woman named Julie Braun, she calls herself the  “Marketing Guru”. www.juliebraundesign.com

Julie was doing huge, major, multiple  marketing projects on a scale that made my head spin. She was doing events and PR and entire marketing campaigns for small to medium sized businesses. She was providing services that would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But she wasn’t working with Fortune 500 budgets. She was affordable. How did she do it?

It turns out that years ago Julie mastered the art of engaging INTERNS. UNPAID INTERNS.

Now these are not slaves. These are not college kids who come to your business to do all the yucky work like filing and photo copying (you just may have to pay for that kind of stuff. Do not even think about doing that crap yourself. You can’t afford it any more).

Julie was setting up specific projects, real honest to goodness projects and allowing students to truly get hands on experience. So she was able to do often times 10 times the work that she would be able to do alone.

She had learned a way to not only leverage her knowledge and expertise but her time and resources in a way that enabled her to Work “on” her business as well as “in” her business. Her only investment was her time and attention and she developed exactly the skills working with interns that all of us entrepreneurs MUST develop any way if we want our businesses to succeed. The ability to delegate intelligently. The ability to manage other people. The ability to lead. The ability to generate and incorporate intelligent feedback.

All without a huge financial risk putting pressure on your learning curve.

I got so inspired by that I immediately found a Yale student who wanted to learn NLP, he ended up editing my first year’s NLP training audio series.  He got to expand his knowledge base and I got a project accomplished that I just didn’t have time to do. That was my “big toe in the water experience”

Now over the years, Julie has really fine tuned all of the details and concepts of using unpaid interns in her business to the point where it was just obvious she had to share the goods with those of us who were struggling with this whole “solopreneur” thing.

So Last summer she and her business partner Michelle Demers www.totalbusinessfitness.com created SuperInterns.com it’s what I call a “Turbo Booster Zoooom  course” designed to get you up and running with unpaid interns fast.

To be honest, I signed up for the first one but because I was too “burned” out from teaching my 2nd NLP training and some personal stuff going on in my life, I never got to class. BUT they recorded every call and I finished the course later while driving in the car. My point is you can learn this no matter how busy you are.

(BTW Michelle met Julie in a different Mastermind group – are you getting that you need to “mastermind”?)

The Super Interns Crash Course will be offered again in a few weeks and if you are in business for yourself (or if your employer doesn’t have the budget to hire the help you need to do your job right) THIS IS REQUIRED. You owe it to yourself to take this.

This is:
“Save Your Business (And Possibly Your Sanity) 101″

Are you with me on this? I know we all have the attention spans of 2 year olds these days but this is vital so PAY ATTENTION:

Whether you take the course or not this is so important that you MUST at the very least know about it. I could not live with myself if I didn’t share this information with you. It’s that important to your success and sanity.

So I’ve invited Julie and Michelle to share their stories with me on a telephone call next Wednesday, January 14th from noon to 1:00 PM eastern time.To Register Click Here

They are also doing an informational call of their own that evening, January 14th at 7:00 pm eastern time. to Register Click Here

• The Call at Noon will be me interviewing them (you will also be able to ask questions).
• The call in the evening is totally their show. So you have some choices.

The calls are free and whichever one you can make, it will be well worth your while to take an hour to find out how you can get some relief from the grind of being the sole practitioner or sole proprietor or solopreneur. It could save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars and possibly enable you to truly catapult your business to the moon. It’s also one very creative way to move forward even in spite of the dire economic forecast and the worst economy in 100 years.

It is also of interest if you have college age kids or know some college students of any age because many colleges require internships precisely because the right internship could make all the difference in whether your children get a dull, low paying, soul crushing job right out of school because they have no experience in the “real world” or get to work closely with the CEO of a growing international company.

I sat down one day and figured out that I need about 10 interns in my business right now.

so if you know anyone who is interested in or is actively studying these or related fields:

• Arts Management
• Internet Marketing
• Psychology, NLP, Hypnosis, Personal Transformation and Change
• Music,Theater, Storytelling
• Graphic Design
• Direct Marketing
• Sales Skills
• General Business
• Health and Healing
• Peak Performance

Call me! 203-495-8808 or e-mail me at mark [at] markshepard.com

Registration page for 12 to 1 pm call –
“How to Get Free Help for Your Business” hosted by Mark Shepard Click Here

Registration page for the 7 to 8 pm call – “Unpaid Interns to the Rescue!”
(Super Interns general call) Click Here

Just for registering for either/both calls you’ll get a free ebook “251 Great Internship Projects!” .

If You already “get” that you need the course you can click here to: Register for the Super Interns Crash Course: How To Put Unpaid Interns To Work For Your Business – early bird special ends Friday 1/9!

BTW when you do decide to take the course, be sure to mention my name and you will get $50 bucks off of the already too cheap price of the course.

Please leave a comment below and share this with as many people as you can

Thanks!

Mark

Well here we go again. The New Year officially feels like it begins today with everyone heading back to work after the holidays.

For me the last few weeks have been all about choices and the direction I’m being sometimes led and sometimes pushed in (okay sometimes it feels like being shoved).

I’ve gotten a number of moving e-mails inspired by my last two posts so I thought it would be appropriate today to share a few thoughts about goals, and living your dreams and interpreting the events of your life in such a way as to make sense of things…

Ever since I was 8 years old I’ve wanted to be a singer/songwriter. You all know that by now. You also know that for some strange reason the very personality traits that made me really good as a song writer in only about 2 years of applying myself to it, took me basically the next 30 years to learn how to live with and how to get out into the world. Sensitivity and creativity don’t always make the best business partners.

In my 20’s a friend gave me a copy of the classic book “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.

This is a book that basically says the same thing as “The Secret” but about 50 years earlier.

One of Hill’s main points is Persistence. If one is pursuing a worthy goal there will be obstacles. There will be setbacks. The main difference between the people who achieve greatness and those who don’t is the willingness and ability to push on even when it looks like nothing is working.

In example after example Napoleon Hill tells of people who gave up inches away from the mother lode. Those very same people, having learned that lesson moved on to create riches and success in their lives despite having missed great opportunities earlier.

So when nothing seems to be working, when you think you’ve exhausted all your resources following your heart that’s the moment to pick yourself up, dust your self off and keep asking the powerful questions.

• “How can I get to where I want to go?”
• “What is it I’m not seeing that when I see it will unlock this block and let me move forward?”
• “What’s the one question I need to ask that will give me access to all my resources?”
• Who can I ask for help who would benefit as much from helping me as I will from being helped?
• “Why does it work out better than I can possibly imagine?”

Sometimes persistence means taking a step back. Sometimes what looks like a “retreat” is really an advance in a different direction. Sometimes the best way through a wall is to take the long way around.The point is whatever happens we are the ones who attach meaning to it. So it’s always up to us to decide whether something is a setback or an opportunity to learn and change our approach.

So today, as you think about the year ahead. What do you truly want for your life? What kind of year would be so awesome and wonderful for you that you will look back 10 or 20 years from now and think, “2009 was the pivot point. 2009 was the year when it all started to come together”

All the experts tell us to write out goals down. Create a “vision board”. Focus on what we want daily. So  get out a sheet of paper and in your own handwriting write out at least 3 things you want for yourself this year.

In the next few posts I’ll share with you some powerful tools from NLP and Time Line to literally “program” your future.

but before you grab the paper and pen.

go ahead and play the victory song video below and let it play in the background while you write. It’s all about this and is filled with powerful questions to get your unconscious mind working with you…

Keep writing those goals and resolutions. In my next post I’ll share the next steps…

Please leave a comment or share this with a friend!

Thanks!

-Mark

BTW This song can be found on my Thirsty For the Sky CD. If you’d like to invest in some of my music CD’s (and support the “Life In Song” Project) just click this link: Mark Shepard’s CD’s