I am a big one for having no regrets. Its time to stop the regrets. I don’t want to be 60 years down the track (yes, I am going to live a long time) and sitting in my beautiful apartment overlooking the beach, with my sexy male nurse, thinking back over my life and having regrets about not doing things.

While I was designing my personal year planner for my subscribers on my ‘Adventure’ email list (which just hit 67,000 by the way) and in the column ‘Things I’ve always wanted to do’, I started writing down those things that I personally haven’t done yet.

I’ll be honest—there were NOT too many as I have always strived to make things happen in my life so I don’t have regrets. I think it ‘I will do it’ is my motto.

One thing on the list has evaded me for 15 years. For fifteen long years, I have come up with excuses why I can’t do this particular thing. What is it you may be asking? It’s a trip around the North Island.

Now, I love my country and have spent a lot of time in the South Island exploring (because who wouldn’t—it truly is the most beautiful piece of land in the world). But when it comes to the North Island, I have left it hanging. I know the excuses I have made: I don’t have time, summer is here and I have to get the most out of the weather at the beach, we can’t afford it….

In truth, for some reason it was always just too hard.  

So, I was sitting there at my desk looking at the list and I asked myself, ‘Will this trip be a regret? Would I chastise myself for not going or giving it the effort I do when I want to travel overseas?’

And the answer was ‘Yes’.

In that moment, I turned my thinking around. Is this really such a hard trip to plan? What was getting in the way (it’s not like I needed a plane—I have a car for crying out loud)? Could I not just get in my car and go?

The thought of packing the car up and just throwing a dart at the North Island map gave me shivers. My brain was going miles a minute at the possibilities. And then it hit me. Seriously, nothing should be stopping me.

Such wild thoughts led to an instant decision—I’m doing it!!!

Are you like me when you are traveling and you see a town or something on the side of the road that you might like to check out and you don’t stop BECAUSE you don’t want to lose your place in the traffic?

OMG, how silly. But I have found myself doing that. Or I want to get to my destination in a good time (better time than last time) so I won’t stop. Where has the spirit of exploration gone when traveling our own country, the freedom to check out the little towns that are off the highways?

So my new rule is if we see something of interest we have to STOP.

First stop? North Island. Look out because we are coming to explore you over the summer!!! One day I’m just going to chuck things in the car and go!!!

Spontaneity.

I hope you will join me on my adventure.  

To catch up on this adventure go to Day ONE,  Heading to Taupo 

The post Stop the Regrets – North Island trip appeared first on Pauline Stockhausen.

I had been writing my disappointments in my diary and the one thing I repeated over and over again was, “I wish I had willpower”.

Willpower…. At that point of my life everything hinged on “willpower”. It was the one thing I didn’t have and the one thing I wanted more than anything.

Willpower… Why didn’t I have it? Why?

For years I wrote in that diary and for years the running theme was how I had no willpower. I felt that everything rested on this “fact”. Yet today willpower isn’t a word in my vocabulary.

What happened? What changed?

It was a realisation I had when I was on a journey to define my life. I felt lost, hopeless and useless. I had all these incredible people around me doing amazing things and I was the single mother who did everything wrong, who wasn’t going to amount to much. I wanted to lose weight and even that had eluded me.

I had based my whole life on what I thought everyone around me thought of me. And the fact that one silly person in particular had told me I had “no willpower”. Everyday I tried overcoming this perceived lack of willpower and everyday I failed.

When I was defining what I wanted to do with my life a thought came into my mind; “Why should I bother trying to figure this out? I have no willpower so I wont be able to achieve it anyway!”
Suddenly I stopped and thought about what I had just said to myself. I remember I was sitting in a cafe and my daughter was only three years old. She was chatting away about her fluffy and something inside me clicked. “What is willpower? I can’t see it, touch it, or smell it. It’s not a muscle in my body. What is this thing I supposedly don’t have?” Suddenly I realised it didn’t really exist. Willpower doesn’t exist! I had blamed everything that I couldn’t achieve on something that doesn’t really exist and it was this false belief that was stopping me from doing anything.

I realised I didn’t even like the word. I must have muttered something as my daughter piped up, “Mummy if you don’t like it I’ll throw it away in the bin.” I looked at her and suddenly I knew I needed to get rid of the word. I quickly got my pen out and wrote the word on a napkin. Miss Three looked confused but she jumped from her chair screwed up the napkin (dramatically and with a cheeky smile) and she threw it away. Plonking herself back down again, she took a sip of her fluffy and said, “Now we can move on”.
I watched her in awe. Can it be that simple?

I chuckled to myself thinking how odd and how crazy people would think I was to throw a word away. But the funny thing was it worked for me. I’ve never used the word again. I took its power over me and threw it away and once I had made that decision it was over.

It was like a new day, a new beginning. And from that day forth, everything I set my mind to do in life I achieved. (The losing weight goal is a work in progress…. but hey, we aren’t all perfect.)

So what words are you using that are stopping you becoming who you want to be? What words do you just want to banish from your vocabulary? Write them down on a piece of paper (or a napkin), and then throw the paper away. Burn it. Chop it up in a million pieces. Get it out of your life.

If you want to share your words please comment and tell me below.

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Well, we all need to just get over it!  Remove yourself from the whinging corner and start working with what you have. Nothing is free in this world. The sooner we remember that the sooner we can move on. We don’t get adverts in the newspaper or on the radio waves for free so why should we expect to get free advertising space on Facebook?

It isn’t all bad. You still have the audience you have grown. Effectively they are still there. You now just have to pay a little bit to be seen and heard.

Start putting together a budget and just get on with things. If you are a smaller company and you don’t have a huge budget then just put what you can towards it. One of our smaller clients can only afford $10 a week. She “boosts” one post a day for $7 but stops it once it reaches $2. She has been testing it for two weeks and it has tripled her sales.

So, a little can go a long way.

Now that you have to spend money on Facebook you need to really think about the content you are sharing. Stop the sales posts and start to entertain your fans, give them ideas, inspire them, let them get to know you better. Don’t forget people are more likely to buy from and recommend people they know – Let them get to know you more through your Facebook posts.

Put that budget together. I would have Facebook advertising once a month and then have money set aside for boosting posts.

Be active and make it work for you and your budget.

Alternative measures:

If you really are put off by the way Facebook is working and feel you need more control then start working towards transferring your Facebook audience over to a database.  Start creating incentives for your Facebook fans to join your mailing list. Things you will need to think about, depending on your business, is how many times you should send an email out. It won’t be as frequent as Facebook. What are you going to write in the newsletter to keep that audience on your database engaged?
Another form of taking control is to spend more time updating your website. Get that blog working for you.

The post Stop complaining and make Facebook work for you appeared first on Pauline Stockhausen.

But I can go weeks without them. Sometimes I lay in bed wishing they would come because they are the way I live and work. My ideas help people (but mostly they help me).

Many of my ideas are to do with challenging myself. And to be honest, those ideas often end up with me hurt in some way, like learning how to kickbox or training for a fight, or climbing a huge mountain to prove that I can. Pain, lots of pain.

I frequently get half way through the latest challenge and cuss the person who thought it was such a great idea—and then I realise I have only myself to blame. However, the rewards at the end of any challenge outweigh the pain I have to go through to meet or complete it.

Those ideas that come with a certain amount of pain are the best overall because I have made lifelong friendships during the adventures, I have  learnt  important lessons that help me in the rest of my life and, most importantly, I achieve something or fail at something—I LIVE.

Some of my ideas have brought much failure, but I welcome it. I welcome it because I am living when I am pushing myself, I am experiencing things and learning things that in the end make it all worth it.

I love pushing myself—to a certain extent. When it comes to the scary ideas, they push my comfort zone to the max. And then I tell myself those are the ideas you need to act on because, even though it is going to hurt, it is going to teach you so much on what you can endure.

In fact, just thinking about my latest idea has put me in a sweat. Last night, I stayed up all night trying to argue myself out of it because it will be putting everything I know in question. Sacrifices will be made.

This is an important step in moving in a direction I have been slowly following over the last few years. It means moving away from conventional things, downsizing and living a more minimalist life…not living to have stuff.

This new and scary idea means I will have to give up many creature comforts. Can I do that? Can I do it so that I find a better way to live my life?  

(By now, I know you are thinking “What the hell is this idea?” Sorry. Can’t say just yet. It’s still brewing, but I’ll let you in on the secret when I have fully committed to it. This blog post is more about those ideas that scare you but you do nothing about them.)

Too many of us shy away from the scary ideas or put them in the “Maybe Next Year” category of our diaries or we make a hundred excuses why we can’t do it.

It’s 2017, a fresh, new, clean slate. And it is high time to air those scary ideas out. Look at them, research them. Are they still calling to you? Do you think they are still valid? Do they still scare you?

A new year can mean a new YOU.

So gather all those ideas that you pushed into the “too-hard basket” into a pile and pull one puppy out. THEN commit to it!

Make this year about YOU!   

Make this year about challenging yourself!  

Don’t forget: Let me know what your idea is. Send me a message, give me progress updates or send me your blog posts. I want to know what you are committing to this year!!!

The post Do you get scary ideas appeared first on Pauline Stockhausen.

I was riddled with pain and self doubt and I was disillusioned with life. I believed I wouldn’t amount to anything—my core mantra was “Why try when I know I will fail?”

So, for many years, I didn’t try at all. I was a couch surfer of life and I lived vicariously through whatever TV series I was watching at the time.

I knew deep down there was more, but I didn’t have the knowledge or the belief that I could do it.  

How things have changed.

I know where I am heading today and I want to experience everything. Boy, I welcome failure because I know after I fail at something I learn something profound and what happens next always blows my mind. After failure comes greatness.  

If you want to achieve something in your life that you think is totally impossible then you NEED to get on the ‘learning train’. Nothing comes to those who don’t live and breathe what they love.

It doesn’t matter how your consume content as long as you do.

What changed my direction? A few things it turns out. But at the foundation was a desire to be more than I was, to be in control of my life and not be controlled by others. I knew I needed more even if I was scared.

I started to write my life strategy plan. (I originally had set out to plan just the year ahead of me, but it suddenly occurred to me to think what would it look like if I planned the next 10 years?)

Here are a few things I put down:

• get a degree
• get off DPB
• start my own business
• live by the beach
• travel regularly for work and holiday

As I write this I can truthfully say I have achieved all of the above. (At the time of writing that action plan, I also thought I would have my own art gallery, but as time went on things morphed and took me places I could never have imagined.)

The idea is you have to start somewhere and by starting you see other opportunities that can come along. It’s a fun process and looking back 10 years I have seen how integral these plans have been because I am always moving towards something. Moving towards a destination is a lot better than wandering in the bush hoping you will get somewhere.

We all need direction. We need goals, otherwise days fly by turning into weeks, months and then years and when we look back we are still in the same place, wishing we had done something….anything. No holidays were taken, no adventures had, and you look back over your life and see all the time you wasted doing nothing.

So what are YOU going to do about it?  

You have two very clear options: do nothing or do something. I am ever so hoping you are going to do something.

“Sure,” you are going to think to yourself, “but I don’t know where to start.”

AH HA!! That is where I can help. You see, I have come up with the perfect plan because I have designed my life strategy plan so that it can help anyone. And I love to help others move forward. And what I love about this process is it helps me be in control of my ideas, wants and dreams. It gives me so much energy to plan and work out where my life is going.

Life is worth living. Let me help you get inspired for your life again. Let me help you get that drive and change the way you think so that you can plan out the next few years with a direction.

So, if you are feeling like life has kicked you to the curb one too many times or you feel like you are sitting on the sidelines of life, join me over the next few weeks for all my weekly updates to help you get on track!

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Now, I love networking online so I go through and see how many friends we have in common and if there are enough that they seem to be legit I will accept them.

But there is a drawback to my method. I have slowly realised that someone somewhere had a brain wave (and shared it) that if you could add tons of people to your FB profile you could then SELL to them. This means that along with the new friends, I have been getting a lot of “Do I have an opportunity for you” messages or WORSE I have been added to product groups without my permission.

Now, there is a right way and a wrong way to make the most of FB and I don’t know who is giving them advice but they are doing it OH SO THE WRONG WAY.

In the hopes of helping anyone thinking of using this method, here are a few things NOT to do:

1. Once added to a person’s FB page, DO NOT go onto their timeline and spam them with your product/business opportunity (unless your goal is to be unfriended immediately).
2. DO NOT send them a private message about your “great opportunity.”
3. DO NOT post 5-6 posts a day on how great your MLM products are (especially not with photos that are obviously downloaded from Google).
4. DO NOT add people to your group without their permission.
5. DO NOT message them constantly telling them how great the product is and how it would benefit them to use it.

So what can you do? Try these tips:

1. Once added to their page, do your research (find out who they are, where they live, what they do).  
2. Engage in their posts but not by talking about you or your business.
3. Send them a private message to introduce yourself (who you are, where you live) and thank them for adding you; say you look forward to building an online friendship (again, nothing about your business).
4. Remember online selling is all about ongoing building of relationships so populate your FB page with value.
5. If you think someone would do well in your group then send them a private message saying “Hi, I have a group called ____.  My goals for this group are to ____ and ____. This might be of interest to you. Let me know what you think. Talk soon.”
6. If they decide to not be added to your group, it isn’t a reflection on you—it could be simply a time thing.
7. Most Importantly, ENGAGE, ENGAGE, ENGAGE. Get involved, be vulnerable, ask questions, provide good content and build relationships!

So you are now thinking “But, how else do I sell?” The rule of thumb is 90/10: 90% good content and 10% selling. Provide value and the sales work is 90% done. Trust me.

The post What NOT to do when you have a networking business appeared first on Pauline Stockhausen.

Inbound is the biggest conference I have ever experienced. (With between 17,000 to 19,000 attendees—every person who spoke gave us a different number—we took up a massive conference centre.) Meant to be focussed primarily on digital marketing, social media and sales, it blurred the lines with the Spotlight and Keynote speakers to its detriment. You know how in marketing we always talk about being ‘niche’ and making sure you ‘niche down’? I found Inbound couldn’t seem to do that. It was as if it was fighting within itself to be something more.

First up and on point was Gary Vanderchuck, a speaker who knew why he was there and delivered as always. His presentation got me amped up for the rest—if the line up was to continue in this vein, I was about to get my mind blown. Sadly, that was not the case. Celebrities like Anna Kendrick, Serena Williams and Mike Strahan, while interesting, weren’t there to talk about digital marketing, social media or sales. The interview style was more of a ‘look at me’ parade. Don’t get me wrong. I was fascinated, but I came away with nothing of value, nothing to implement. No story was told that had me coming away with a ‘WOW’. It felt very underwhelming.

This is where Inbound’s lines blurred. What were they trying to be? Were these celebrities featured just to pull in the crowd? How could they have woven them into the essence of the conference so that we attendees came away with value?

Another drawback? The conference fell on the week of the US elections. Tough break. Mind you, I was there in part to observe the elections and found it was interesting that they chose Ta-Nehisi Coates as a keynote for the day after. If you are not familiar with him, he writes and is very vocal on race. Nothing to do with digital marketing. (I knew with the result of the elections there was no way he was going to deliver what he prepared and he didn’t.)

While I was fascinated by this choice, I was also disappointed. Everyone was sleep deprived, hurt, confused, angry and in disbelief when the announcement of the new US President was made. The audience needed to be uplifted. They needed a touch of hope at this point but it didn’t come from Ta-Nehishi. He was brilliant, thoughtful, provoking and challenging, but it was the wrong place and definitely the wrong time. People walked out or posted their frustrations on Twitter. It wasn’t the best start to the day. Politics divides and the room became divided. (The rule of thumb that you should never bring politics or religion to the table rings true for conferences as well.)

Having started with the negative, let me move into the positive: The sessions. Inbound is well organised and pre-registering for the sessions made everything easy. Getting to sessions became a fun personal challenge of “how many steps can I make today”. Just for your information, I averaged 12,000 to 15,000 a day. (Well played Pauline—learning and fitness combined.)

The sessions were great (some more than others as is to be expected) and the speakers were, on the whole, good. As with anything, not everyone will have the same experience and where I felt a keynote was off brand others might have loved them. That said, the speakers who stood out for me for their great delivery and incredible take-aways were:

Jody Sutter: Ad Agencies
Alexia Vernon: Women’s Leadership Development
Doug Landis: What’s your Story?
George B. Thomas: Hubspot
Larry Kim: Twitter and FB Hacks

I will be providing you with my key take-aways soon.

All in all, for such a large conference, Inbound got most of it right.

Is it a conference to commit to and would I go again? The answer is YES to both. Overall, the content was very good but the people were better and you cannot put a price on building relationships. I think Inbound was an ‘experience’ and one you need to have.

The post Inbound 16: My Experience appeared first on Pauline Stockhausen.

The Stockhausen Show

Are you looking at starting a business? Wanting to get more out of your life?

Are you  feeling stuck in your life or in business?  Need inspiration or motivation?

Do you want to change but not sure what to do or how to do it?

We have all been there. That is why i have launched  “The Stockhausen Show” so i can motivate,  inspire and get the answers to those burning questions.

We have some amazing guests lined up!

To see my shows CLICK HERE 

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MEDIA:

If you would like to be a guest on the show please contact us below.

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