Welcome to the "beattitude" series of videos. "beattitude" is all about growth - growth in your personal life (health, relationships, finances, emotional, spiritual), growth in your business and growth in blogging (just in case you happen to be a blogger, too).

What is growth? First and foremost, growth is what happens when what is preventing it is eliminated. Growth is the natural state of things. Expressed, growth leads to happiness, while suppressed, it leads to frustration and despair. Growth is your most versatile key to a better life for yourself, the people around you and the world at large. Growth means progress, and progress of course is the great tendency of human kind that has survived all other tendencies combined. When you grow - when you eliminate everything that is preventing it - you realize what you get as a result of growth is not nearly as important as who you become in the process.

Blogging and personal growth are not often mentioned in a same breath with selling. For one thing, blogging and personal growth are noble while selling is very often given a bad rap. The three best reasons behind selling’s poor reputation are:

• People love to buy, but they don’t appreciate being sold to.
• Selling can be outright dishonest, deceiving and manipulative – often is.
• Selling is difficult. Rather than attempt and risk failure, doing nothing (while criticizing those who do) is the preferred option for many. But refusing to attempt requires reason, if only in their own mind, hence "selling is bad."

Some go as far as to declare “honest selling” an oxymoron.

Customer meets engineer. “Hey, engineer, can I ask you a question?”
The engineer replies, “I’m not allowed to talk to customers. We believe that honesty impedes sales.”
“I think you just impeded,” the customer concludes.

For one like me, blogger and entrepreneur, selling is simply part and parcel of life. Anyone ever engaged in getting ready for an important date has sales experience.

I value honesty AND selling equally. The two complement each other just fine. When there is absence of honesty, it’s in people, not in the act of selling per se. Creating a new business – for-profit or non-profit – absolutely involves selling. To engage in the act of selling with the goal of maybe one day employing others, and most significantly, to provide a service that improves peoples’ lives, I regard as my most fitting challenge and opportunity. Building a business is my greatest growth and contribution, greater than any charity I can make.