Results of real-world application of lessons learned from 40+ years
of “personal development” training, martial arts, and success
building businesses to inform your decisions and ideas for
dramatically improved outcomes in every area

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Grow yourself, grow your business…
Real-life business lessons for the inner entrepreneur…

Many people can teach you funding metrics, KPIs, how to avoid taxes, increase ‘likes’ or improve your SEO…

But, I’m here to talk about YOU!
You are the spiritual leader of your business.
You are the driving force making it go…

“It’s not personal, it’s just business!”  😕
So we’ve been told. But wait…
What if… It’s not just business, it is personal? 😎
And maybe more personal than you think?

What if…
You are the Secret Sauce!

To the voices of all the wise teachers I’ve known and studied, I humbly add my own personal experience, learning, perspective, and methodology to enable other entrepreneurs to access their true power and way of being.

As far as I know, I’m one of the few who has studied personal development (some call it “self-awareness”) for 40+ years, applied it directly to building and running a company, and then wrote a book to share what I learned.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’m always hesitant about reading business books written by so-called consultants. Anyone can give himself the title of consultant. All they have to do is read a couple of books on the latest business trends and start using the jargon picked up from the reading. What I love about Business Black Belt is that Burke Franklin has been down the road, up and down, several times. His is a narration from the trenches of battle, not from the comfort of a battle-cruiser a few miles out at sea.

He tells it to you with all the gory details that business life entails. Most of the books that are out there right now are written by infopreneurs that are trying capitalizing on our thirst for answers. Alas, most of these writers’ knowledge of business consists of cashing the checks they receive from their publishers. The wisdom contained in this book is more valuable than what you’ll learn from reading all the current business bestsellers. Buy this book. You can thank me when you’re done.”
~ Adolfo Bernal Jr., Austin, TX

A Deeper Look Into Some Practicalities of Conscious Business…
and How to Apply Them to Building Your Company

Punching, kicking, and screaming all way to the top…
getting knocked down 7 times, getting up 8…
and what you can apply toward your own business success.

Much of What we do, How we do It,
and Why we do it, is Unconscious.

Many successful people are “unconsciously competent,”
meaning they’re successful, but cannot tell you what they did.

While we’ve always been told to “learn from our mistakes,”
I would add that it’s equally important to remember to learn from our successes!

I wanted to document the “being, thinking, and actions” behind my successes, so you could recreate them for yourself.

Reading this book and others like it will help us to avoid
doing certain things unconsciously, make better decisions,
and take appropriate action for everyone’s good.

Think of this as a 20-year head-start!

Nominated to “Forbes’ Top 20 Most Influential
Business Books of the Past 20 Years“

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I hate it when good products, companies or people fail!
And I wanted to share what I’ve learned from building my own business over 30 years compounded by creating software to help others build theirs.

True stories of successful business-building…

In 1980, I attended my first “awareness & consciousness” workshop.
Magic occurred and I’ve been studying and practicing it ever since!

I’ve gone way down the “woo-woo” rabbit hole, practiced “magical thinking”,
and, out the other side, I’m here I teach what I now think of as a “Pragmatic Consciousness.”

To prove my points, I started a company that grew beyond $10 million with 30 people with 10 products in more than 3,500 stores.

Along the way, I used a lot of the woo-woo stuff behind my management style.
It’s interesting how it worked out.

And, for what it’s worth, I also started my martial arts training about the same time I started Business Power Tools (originally known as JIAN) and immediately noticed many parallels.

You might even think of your own business as your opportunity for a conscious awakening as if your business were a spiritual dojo. It can offer a reflection of your own ethos — look within and fix / update(?) your own thinking before you try to fix everything and everyone else.

I’ve been infusing this perspective, knowledge, and experience into Business Power Tools products and blogs since the beginning, in order to educate and influence people through business.

I like to think of Business Black Belt as an Action Manual of Higher Awareness and Applied Intuition.

Read my book and I’ll tell you all about it.
I’ll explain what I was thinking, what the theory was,
what the opportunity or problem was and how it was solved.

Truth is, it’s all stuff you can do yourself.
Now you’ll start to see from other perspectives.

Picks up where most Business Schools, Consultants, Gurus leave off

More than 100 insights, tricks, tips, hacks, and ideas to help you to see danger before it gets you, not “step in something,” as well as make better decisions faster.

• Business Black Belt is real, raw and relevant
• It’s a fast, informative read
• 70+ brief stories clearly make each point in one sitting
• Business Black Belt makes a great gift for the entrepreneurs in your life

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What Other Successful Business Thought Leaders Say…

“I loved Business Black Belt! This book is a uniquely powerful success manual. It is jam-packed with useful insights that will enable you to win in business and in life. Author Burke Franklin has total credibility thanks to his accomplishments in the martial arts combined with his brilliant career in business. Compared to this tour de force, most other business books I read spend lots of pages hitting and missing and groping and fumbling when it comes to delivering practical information. This one flies to the mark over and over again, on page after enlightening page. Most unusual of all, and most gratifying, is that Franklin genuinely succeeds in applying lessons from the martial arts — and from other forms of physical endeavor — to the world of business.

The typical book that promises benefits from a field of endeavor outside of business, be it sports, war, or whatever, never actually succeeds in importing the mastery of one field into another. I suspect that the reason the attempt so often fails is that it was never intended to be much more than a gimmick for a clever title. In the case of Business Black Belt, the different disciplines are truly merged. There is also a rare sense of thoughtfulness. The ideas Franklin presents are not off-the-cuff notions slammed down on the page to meet a publishing deadline; they are hard-won insights culled with honesty and integrity from his own experience and set down with clarity so that the reader can profit from them.

Wherever you are in your career, whatever the stage or situation of your present business, reading Business Black Belt will energize and stimulate you with wisdom that is at once hard-hitting, subtle, and profound.”
~ Scott DeGarmo, former Editor-in-Chief & Publisher of SUCCESS Magazine

“Mr. Franklin is coming from a place of ensuring competitive advantage by assuming that he cannot rest on his laurels and stop marketing or valuing customers. I appreciate this very much. I agree that even that even the invoices and phone contacts with clients are sales components; they represent your company’s tone and values.

The final chapter discusses business plans, which is appropriate. His book leads us from the big idea state of building a business to formal plans to work from and sell to investors. His tips on writing effective copy are no less practical and clear than the rest of the book. I certainly find his writing style to be compelling, pragmatic yet it informed by esoteric/spiritual values which ring true for me. I look forward to using my his [BizPlanBuilder business plan software] program to work with my capstone project and other business interests.”
~ Antioch College MBA student

“Business Black Belt is a fascinating account of hundreds of business situations and how one might approach them. I found nuggets on every page. The chapters are short and filled with poignant examples.”
~ Roger McManus, Publisher, North Carolina Entrepreneur Magazine

“Finally, some great business ideas that are much more than just what to do, he actually explains how to do them.”
~ Bill Hayes, President, Automatic Rain, Menlo Park, CA

“If you’re looking for practical tips and tricks you should know and use on a day-to-day basis, they’re in here!”
~ Larry Moore, Larry’s Auto Works, Mountain View, CA

“Once I started reading Business Black Belt, I couldn’t put this unique book down. It is a compendium of information, anecdotes and lessons that can be easily and immediately, applied to transform effort into success.
A one of a kind book by a businessman who has been there and can show you how to get there.”
~ Dr. Joe Kolezynski, Executive Director, Professional Golfers Career College, Windermere, FL

Why This Is Such an Unusual Business Book…

and why you might want to read it now

I never expected to write another business book because there are so many good ones out there. Nevertheless, instead of giving you a pitch for buying and reading it, here’s some background on what went into Business Black Belt:

Since the beginning of my career, I knew I wanted to have my own company and I wanted to learn as much as possible about human nature, including my own, as applied to starting, building and managing a successful business.

I took my very first self-improvement workshop in the winter of 1980, it was called “Playground” written by Paul Larsen of Summit Workshops (formerly he had written several workshop for Werner Erhardt of the est training).

I went because I had just read Winning at Office Politics and my motive was to ingratiate myself at Texas Instruments with our Operations Manager who had invited me.

I was blown away by what I experienced and learned!

It was a workshop actually designed for actors to enable them to more fully get in touch with their emotions and to truly express themselves in the parts they played.

It felt great, my mind quieted, I felt connected — and learned to recreate these states, when things got jangly.
I was never the same.

(That’s what people mean by “transformation.”
Remember to be discerning when you take a course promising to “transform” you.)

The other workshops were more like experiential (meaning you do things like write, make lists, Play A/B with partners, share… vs. sit & listen) group therapy with aspects of what is now sometimes called “Timeline Therapy.” (Looking back at your childhood and the thinking you used to make sense of things then — You can tell when there seems to be pattern in your life today where certain situations continue to repeat themselves like it’s Groundhog Day every day. And you respond with the same old thinking you always have, as if your 5-year-old self was in charge…)

My grandmother used to tell me to, “Save the best until last!” That worked fine when I was a child eating dinner, but not so well at a high-school dance or pursuing a customer base…

My favorite story to tell to illustrate the bizarre-ness of these workshops is about the one where they played sounds while we listened and wrote in stream-of-consciousness, then discussed the reactions we had.

It was really about developing an awareness of what random things can trigger us unconsciously into another emotional state. And how to catch ourselves and consciously change our state back or to a better state.

One night they played the sound of ice cubes dropping into a glass…
I envisioned my grandfather and myself having a 7-Up, while all around me the children of alcoholic parents were going crazy!
Just hearing the sound of ice cubes sent them over the edge! Could you catch yourself mid-trigger vs. behaving badly and blowing it?
They got over it then and there.

Over the next 15 years I took every one of their workshops — and many of them several times!

It never ceased to amaze me what would change in my world after I reconciled some issue blocking me from being effective — first, I realized that most ‘realities’ were merely a point-of-view.

When I changed my point-of-view — things changed

Sometimes everything changed….
Even the telephone would ring from someone I hadn’t spoken to in years…
A customer would call-in an order…
Stuff like that.

We did workshops using horses in the Arizona desert.
(Horses can reveal certain aspect of your nature too!)
We learned scuba-diving as well as many metaphors useful to everyday life gleaned from that training.

I’ve taken workshops given by former EST trainers

I took all of Anthony Robbins’ courses…

walked on fire (several times), climbed to the top of poles, dropped into a city for a 24-hour period with nothing, but a quarter ($.25) and an apple (I ate it right away).

I started taking karate lessons about the same time I started JIAN (now rebranded as Business Power Tools) in 1988.
I persisted and continued to earn a 2nd degree Black Belt in TaeKwonDo.

I learned to fly

Today, I have 780+ hours and I’m instrument-rated.
I even owned a 1980 Beech V-tail Bonanza (V35B).
There are many things one can learn about business from flying an airplane!

These were not goals I had written down — I just went there, signed-up and kept going.

I can’t tell you how many self-help, psychology, and business books I’ve read.
Every one of them had at least several gems.

I sold electronic components for Texas Instruments.
I was the Electronics Buyer for The Sharper Image catalog.
I was in promotional videos for Apple, HP, Tandem Computers, Xerox, …
I even acted in TV commercials for Chevrolet, Honda, Toyota, Yuban, and SuperCuts!
I worked with former summit trainers and former EST trainers who consulted with me for my company for many years.

I belonged to TEC (now Vistage)

12-15 company CEOs meet once a month, learn something profound from an expert, have lunch, then spend the afternoon solving each others’ problems. I could turn every session into a Business Power Tools software product!

Believe me, I would never have undertaken to write this book if there wasn’t something more to say.

Everything I learned, I applied to my own business.
Everything I learned from the workshops I participated in…
from the consultants I worked with…
from my experiences working for large and small companies…
as well as for the 30 years invested in developing business-building software tools…
Most of that worked, there were some disasters, and some of it needed tweaking to make it work…

This is what Business Black Belt is about.

I have a lot to say, but I say it all for a reason!
I share many anecdotes that will help you keep your head on straight.

My instructions to my editor were to make sure everything makes sense and that my ego is left out.
I think every chapter could be an entire book on its own,
but you can get the point immediately — enough to take the right action.

You can ask for Business Black Belt by name at your bookstore(?)
They may have it in stock or can get it for you very quickly.

(ISBN # 1-56811-016-2) 356 pages. Hard cover.

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