What are your New Year’s Resolutions? Do you make goals that you can reach, and most importantly, keep throughout 2012?  What about goals that you can complete in less than a year? Do you want to lose weight, give to a charity, or further your education & career?

With Dalton Education, you can further your education, and potentially your career, within a year. Both our Live Online & Self-Study programs are designed to be completed nine months from the time you begin your classes. With a good study schedule, and setting goals throughout the year, you’ll be sure to cross this one off your resolution list forever!

Enrolling is just a phone call away. We would love to help you decide which program is right for you, just call and ask!

Happy Holidays!

Many people spend their entire professional life focusing on the prevention of failure. It is almost natural to prevent failing at all costs. As a member of society we are conditioned that failure is the opposite of success. For example, when we “fail” a test, when we “fail” at relationships, when a team “fails” to perform during competition, these are all viewed as the polar opposite of being a success. However, I would argue that failure is not the opposite of success. Failure and success are very closely related. To a certain extent, you cannot fully appreciate success without your share of failures.  If one has learned through failure, than that experience is transformed in to an intellectual success.

The true assassin of a success is Complacent Conformity.  According to Harvard psychologist Herbert Kelman, there are two types of conformity. The first is informational conformity; Informational social influence transpires when one turns to the participants of one's group to acquire accurate information.  The second type of conformity is normative conformity. Normative conformity happens when one conforms to be adored or accepted by the participants of the group. Economists have suggested that whims and movements in culture forms as the consequence of individuals making lucid choices based on evidence received from others. These informational waterfalls form rapidly as individuals choose to discount their inner signals and go along with what other people are doing. For example, the housing bubble:  when everyone was convinced the way to secure wealth was through real estate.

Consider the most successful people in America today. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, refused to conform to social standards and disrupted an entire market. Tony Shea, CEO of Zappos (the largest online shoe store), took selling a tangible product that everyone thought was impossible to sell in an online environment and made a 1.2 billion dollar company. Look at the successful people in your life and you will soon discover that they are non-conformists. Maybe that person lies deep within you.

Conformity happens often in the workplace. For example, a person that does not want to work too hard because they are scared they might work themselves out of a job. Another example would be a person who does not want to develop their professional skills and education because their colleagues lack the drive of pursuit. Even if you are successful in your current position, what got you there is not going to keep you there! Develop your skills, education and experience.  Do not be complacent! Strive for more. The clock is ticking and we are only blessed with a set amount of time in this life, MAKE THE BEST OF IT! Do more, want more, SUCCEED! Thomas Edison said it best “We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present.”

As we head into the season of making shopping and gift lists, take a minute to look at the other lists in your life. Are there things missing? Are there “someday/maybe” items or just items you know you will accomplish.

Does your list have all the things you could be doing except the one thing you really want to do? Have you wanted to put “become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™” on that list but are hesitant to do so?

Our mission at Dalton Education is to help you achieve that goal. We have helped thousands of financial professionals earn the CFP® Certification marks. Whether you need to fulfill the education requirement or prepare for the exam with a review course, we are here to help you.

The founders of Dalton Education have developed, implemented and managed some of the premier CFP® education programs in the country.  Some of our partner universities include NYU, Northwestern, UCLA, and Wake Forest just to name a few.

Dalton Education has a long history of providing high quality curriculum and instruction, which has consistently led to the highest CFP® exam pass rates in the country.  Over 90% of Dalton Education students ultimately become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™.  

Dalton Education also offers The Dalton Review® which is the #1 CFP® review course for the CFP® examination.  The review course was developed by former members of the CFP Board of Examiners.  No other review course is as comprehensive and exam focused as The Dalton Review® for the CFP® exam.

If you have been pondering adding the CFP designation to your list, give us a call at 877-426-2373 so we can help make it easier for you.

Enjoy your holidays and hopefully attacking those lists will be a lot easier than you think!

A few weeks back I came across multiple articles about an interesting phenomenon called Pike Syndrome.  For those non-fisherman out there, a Pike is carnivorous fish and one of the most ferocious known to man.  A team of scientists decided to perform a study placing the Pike on one end of a large tank, placing a glass barrier in the middle of the tank, and on the other side of the tank they put these delicious little tiny fish that the Pikes love to eat.  You can imagine the Pike did just about anything to get to the fish.  Slamming into the glass, trying with all of its effort to break through, but the Pike was unable to break the glass.  After some time the Pike gave up, and sank to the bottom of the tank.  Sometime later the scientist removed the glass barrier and allowed the fish to swim in the same tank as the hungry Pike.  Surprisingly the fish could swim next to the Pike, hang out right in front of the Pikes face, and sure enough the Pike eventually died even though it had all the food it needed to survive.

Now the Pike is a fish, so we are going to let them off the hook this time “no pun intended.”  As intelligent adults, what is our excuse?  Each day we allow barriers, real and imaginary, to prevent us from attaining our goals in life personally and professionally.  We create these barriers tricking ourselves into believing that we will eventually accomplish our goals at some “perfect” time in the future that doesn’t exist.  You have heard the list… I want to lose weight, I want to go back to school, I want to get out of this dead end job, I want to be a better spouse, parent, etc…  A manager once told me, “You’re either growing or dying in your professional and personal life, only you can decide which it is.”  

So how do we avoid Pike Syndrome?  We remove the barriers!!!  We get creative, we stop being complacent, and we strive to make ourselves better each and every day.  The best way to do this is to do more!  Read, take classes that build upon your profession, get out and network, take care of your body and mind.   This is just some of the ways we can achieve our goals and remove those real/imaginary barriers in our daily lives.  



“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”
Jim Rohn