Improve your position. This mantra for success is something people forget every day. When you get up in the morning and keep doing the same thing, you end up in the same position at the end of every day.
Fear. When you think about it, the real root cause of doing the same thing every day is the fear of the unknown. Fear of leaving your comfort zone. Fear of not making that next car payment. Fear of missing time with your friends, fear of losing time with your co-workers.
There is always that one person though. That one person that takes a little time away from the group. There is always that one person that moves out and up. That person that you watch and wonder why it wasn't you.
The secret? Improve your position.
There is more to it though. In order to improve your position, you need to define "improve". How do you know what improvement is if you don't have a destination? The key is to create a vision or destination that is a very clear vision of where you are going. When you have that vision you can improve your position.
In simple terms, if you want to go to the park at the end of the block, and your neighbor asks you to watch the game, are you getting closer to the park? If you want that new car, and your friend calls with tickets to the concert that cost $100, does the concert get you closer to the new car.
These are obvious examples. The most difficult involve an overload of information. The secret to speed in improving your position is filtering out the chaff or useless information.
Simple decisions can hold you back if you don't pay attention, or pay too much attention to the chaff instead of the important points.
Living life with a purpose means having a "mission" in everything you do. Even on vacation you can have a "mission" or "purpose". It might only be to "relax". Everyone needs to recharge from time to time, and that means different things to different people. For me it means turning off the office and work in the front of the brain and letting the back 90% do it's job. For other people it is just to get the family "off their back".
How can you improve your position while on vacation? The reality is that you can always practice cutting through the chaff, even while traveling. Always listening will bombard you with a lot of useless information, and it might just get you that great idea or solve the problem you have been having at the office.
Every time you get a call, ask yourself, "Does this improve my position or put me into a position where I can improve my position?" If it doesn't, learn to say "no" if you want to move ahead.
Showing posts with label success tip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label success tip. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Monday, February 17, 2014
Quick Tips To Help Your Success
I became an entrepreneur because I did not want to be a dentist like my father, but I wanted some of the parts of his lifestyle. I learned very early on that working on Saturday and taking a weekday off was a lot more fun. I did that throughout my high school and college life, which explains my grades.
School is just an extension of society designed to help you work within the confines of the ”standard” workweek. Very few schools teach entrepreneurism the way entrepreneurs teach it. If you take a look at most of the very high achieving entrepreneurs, you'll notice they didn't finish college. At some point they broke away from the norm and have stayed away ever since.
If you want to become a real entrepreneur, Remember some basic rules.
1. Be careful who you listen to. Do they live the life you want to live? Do they do the work you want to do? Only take away the information that is relevant. As a side rule, I generally like to make sure they are making more money than I am if it is an area of business. Yes the coach has a coach (or three).
3. Be accountable somehow. Self starting is a very rare discipline that takes a lot of time to learn. The whole point of vision books, vision boards and goal sheets is to keep you looking towards your destination. The problem is if the destination isn't important enough to have your break away from your comfort zone and your pack, you will never break away. If you make yourself accountable either through a coach, mentor or competitive friend you are much more likely to achieve your goals.
To lose 30 pounds last year, I made a big painful bet with my business partner. I didn't lose a single pound on my own, but the minute we made the wager we both started shedding pounds.
2. There is never "good enough". You can always to better, and should. This doesn't mean have regret, it just means stay relevant by staying on top of your game.
3. Be accountable somehow. Self starting is a very rare discipline that takes a lot of time to learn. The whole point of vision books, vision boards and goal sheets is to keep you looking towards your destination. The problem is if the destination isn't important enough to have your break away from your comfort zone and your pack, you will never break away. If you make yourself accountable either through a coach, mentor or competitive friend you are much more likely to achieve your goals.
To lose 30 pounds last year, I made a big painful bet with my business partner. I didn't lose a single pound on my own, but the minute we made the wager we both started shedding pounds.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Should You Quit And Follow Your Passion?
Quitting everything and going after your dream is the subject of dozens of books. As a business owner and industry leader many other business owners wanted to duplicate my success and would ask me how to do it.
To be truthful, I have told many people that they had to find their own dream and pursue it. They couldn’t be me, my dreams, mission and goals are mine and mine alone. Many people have paid me for advice, and until now, I was overlooking two pieces of key information in the formula.
Cal Newport also points out that you might get lucky and find that your dream is also financially rewarding, but that is rarely the case. When you explore the lives of people we call “successful” in both life and financial rewards, he noted that they did several different things, and went with one that worked and became the best at that "thing".
Looking back over my successes and not so much successes, it is clear that success is much more a simple formula than I ever gave credit for. Pilot? I got pretty good at it, and people pay for it. Both keys here. Business developer and consultant? Yes people pay well for what I have learned and my knowledge in their business. Both keys here Actor? people are starting to buy it, so I’ll probably do more, have a market that will pay, only have some skills and have a plan to improve them. Athlete? Clearly a market, but I never got the skills to a salable level. Musician? Ditto.
To be truthful, I have told many people that they had to find their own dream and pursue it. They couldn’t be me, my dreams, mission and goals are mine and mine alone. Many people have paid me for advice, and until now, I was overlooking two pieces of key information in the formula.
I have to give credit where credit is due, because I have been taking this for granted instead of making sure everyone understood these keys to success. Cal Newport in his book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, pointed out something that was right there all along and I was glancing over it.
There is a bit of irony here since I am taking a hosting and interviewing class right now from Marki Costello, and just about everyone in the class will glance right past the “bombshells” and go for the “safe” route. This is exactly what happens in business. As entrepreneurs we get caught up in our mission and forget to listen to the market.
Some time ago another entrepreneur friend told me “You have to keep a lot of irons in the fire, and go with the ones that get hot.” At the time it didn’t make much sense, and it is still not advice I would give everyone, but Cal Newport puts it a better way that makes sense to me, and is worth passing on.
The First Key
The foundation of any endeavor that requires financial success as part of the grade has to first pass the test of the market. Simply put, you must do something people will pay you for. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if there isn’t a market need, and you can’t convince people that they have one, you can be the greatest, and still be broke.
Lets face it, money does matter. In a way it should right? Society rewards us with money for solving their problems, not ours. When you solve your problems you relieve a little stress, when you solve societies problems you are rewarded with money and power. That isn’t selling out, that is being real.
The Second Key
The two keys together provide and an interesting insight, that was sitting right in front of me. I had been skipping right over it all along, and yet it is exactly why my residential technology business did well in California, and only average to boring in Texas. The market wasn’t as willing to pay for the technology in Texas no matter how good I (an my company) was. In California I had both the market and the skills, in Texas, it was mostly just idle skills.
Instead of looking at it as putting many irons in the fire at once, I think this is more like putting an iron in the fire, branding the cow, and seeing if anyone will buy the brand. If not, get another iron and try again. If they do, get really good at making that brand better.
This is why truly successful people can have many successful ventures. Richard Branson comes to mind here. Once one Iron got hot and everyone liked the brand, he built it up and used that to buy the next iron. While we all know the brands that stuck, records, airlines and cell phones, I am sure there are just as many or more that didn’t take and we never heard of.
At the end of the day, Cal Newport is right. Trying to become a Rockstar just ended in misery, I was in love with the dream, not the product and process so I never attained the skill level needed for my brand to sell. Practicing chords and notes made me nuts. In business, flying and acting, for whatever reason I don’t have any problem pushing to new limits every time I go to work. I like building the skills and thus obtained the second key.
If you have been chasing your passion and it feels like you are chasing your tail, Cal’s book might help you get on the right track.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Are You Doing Your Homework To Succeed?
Doing "homework" is something most people try to stop doing the minute they leave school. That is exactly why most people don't "make it". The reality is that "homework" is probably the second most important key to success right after "purpose".
This week I had a great conversation with Alan Pietruszewski about acting, and the level of effort and training required to become even a good actor, let alone great. Much like flying jets, you just can't walk in and do it well. Alan is a friend and a mentor of mine.
As an actor, I know I have been very lucky and fallen into some great deals. That did not mean I was the best I could be or even what the director wanted. More than once I am sure they felt like they were "stuck" with me because I was the only choice they had. Alan teaches a class for actors who are vets. I haven't taken the classes but I am fortunate enough to get some one on one time with him on occasion.
Along the lines of learning how to do your homework, a book I recommend to everyone is "Boyd". It is the story of the man that changed how we fight wars, and yet few even knew he existed. Boyd's signature statement was, "I am ready, I did my homework". If you don't do your homework, you aren't ready for any job. Even McDonalds' has training to make sure the right number of pickle slices end up on the bun every time.
Doing your "homework" was the focus of AlanPietruszewski's last class.
Doing your homework is the first step in a commitment to excellence. I am very fortunate to live in an area of very successful people. I can do homework in business just by talking to my neighbors and friends. I can do this because I made a conscious decision to be a little "house poor". I buy the least expensive house in the most expensive area I can afford. I do this because I find that being low man on the financial totem pole, affords me many more opportunities to learn and grow.
Being the big fish in a small pond is garbage thinking. You can't grow if the pond won't support you. I remember once hearing that a certain fish can only grow so that it is 1" for each gallon in the tank. The bigger the tank the bigger the fish could get. I want to be that fish and so should you.
Starting out as the smallest fish in a big pond gives you many more opportunities to learn and grow. It also makes it easier to do your homework. Your potential is unlimited, so why limit it by living in a small pond? Yes a big fish might eat you, but you will only get eaten when you give up the fight. Lets face it, big fish are lazy and will just go after the next fish, they really don't want to fight.
Living where I am now, there are dozens of business owners, lawyers, doctors, accountants, and even a musician or two. All of them are successful because they did their homework and keep doing their homework. One guitar player has a studio in his house. I haven't met him yet, but I met his guitar coach while out running. Several platinum albums and he still has a guitar coach every week.
His coach told me that he plays four or five hours every day. That is doing your homework. You owe it to yourself to live the best life you can, and that means doing a little homework today and every day, so that tomorrow is a little better than yesterday.
If you make the most money and have the biggest house in your area, who would you learn from, who would you be inspired by? More importantly, who is inspiring your children, people on MTV or real people they know? Live among the people you want to be like, not among the people that will hold you back.
When you do a little homework every day, you get a little better at being you every day. That "you" will quickly rise to the top of any field. Don't you owe it to yourself?
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Do You Use "Purpose" In Your Decision Making?
Having "purpose" in decision making is easier said that done. Do you let emotions effect your decisions? If you do, why? Do you even know when you do it? The truth is that we can see it in others more easily than we can see it in ourselves.
Every day I bet you see people that can't make a decision. Ask them where to eat, and nobody will step up with a decision. Ask them what they want after they get there and I'll bet you hear "You go then I'll decide". Are you that person who always "lets" others go first? Don't be.
Eating out is a simple example of how people let fear and emotion get in the way. Nobody wants to offend anyone else by picking the wrong place to eat. If everyone else is eating salads, the indecisive will go along instead of getting the steak and lobster they really want. Why? Fear.
Fear of offending someone.
Fear of not belonging.
Fear of being ridiculed or embarrassed by the choice.
You are probably thinking it sounds funny that we have "fear" about where to eat and what to eat, but people do. When I embarked on a very strict no carb diet to lose 30 pounds last year, I realized how often people put off their decisions to go along with what other people were doing.
I never asked anyone else to eat "low carb" or "no carb" but amazingly I didn't see bread or pasta on the table for over five months. I lost the weight and changed my eating habits for good, and it has made ordering that much easier.
In this case I had a genuine purpose that was important to me. I needed to lose weight because of a knee problem that was developing.
New Years resolutions fail for this exact reason. The resolution isn't that important, it is missing a very solid "what's in it for me". Let take a smoker, who decides to quit and look at it from the "what's in it for me" perspective.
1. If I quit, I won't smell like cigarettes. Is this really important to them? probably not, they haven't been bothered enough by it so far.
2. If I quit, I won't need smoke breaks. Is this important? In fact quite the opposite, the smoke breaks may be an escape that they lose. They might feel like they are offending the other smokers by not joining them.
3. If I quit, I'll save money. This is a good one, but if there isn't something to save for, it won't matter.
4. If I quit, I'll be healthier. This is the one that might work. If they have a genuine purpose to live healthier, they might quit smoking. If they just like the idea of living healthier, it isn't a purpose and it won't help.
The real point here is that we all have "ideas" and things that sound good to other people that we agree with. Those things are not your purpose or my purpose, they are just ideas. Like my electric car, being petroleum free is a very interesting academic discussion. The reality is, most people don't care, so it won't happen. In my case my purpose was advancing my economic flexibility by reducing my monthly costs. That was very important to me so I did get the electric car.
If you can map out your purpose clearly, decisions come easy because all you need to do is ask, does that fit my purpose. When it does, you do it, when it doesn't you don't. Life is that simple, we just complicate it trying to please others and fit in, instead of being who we really are.
If you can answer a few simple questions for you, your life and your work, the rest gets easy. The hard part is deciding exactly what you want from this journey we call life.
And before we get there, here is the great irony, we all respect and admire people that make decisions. We might not agree with them, but they are the people we look to. Why not become that person?
These questions should help, if you can answer them you are on your way to making better decisions.
Where are you going? Not today, but what does your future look like? This is the "vision" of your perfect life, a dream you will actually live and achieve. Most people I talk to can't tell me what their dream is anymore. Life has sucked it out of them.
What are you doing to get there? Are you making progress every day, Are you training to be the best you that you can be so you can get where you are going?
How do you contribute? What do you do that adds value to the rest of the world so they will help you get there. What is it that lets you make the decisions and lead the way?
What's in it for you, I mean really? This can be anything and is the toughest and most important question to ask. When you really sit down with most smokers, they can't find a reason that matters to them. It is normally about "they say I should quit". When you ask dieters why they fail, it is similarly about comfort. When I lost 30 pounds, I was in a new zone. My comfort level changed, my wardrobe changed, and change can be tough. This is the most important question. If there isn't anything in it for you that you really want, you aren't likely to achieve much more than the norm.
When you define your purpose, you gladly take the road less traveled without fear or worry. Where will you road take you?
Monday, October 14, 2013
Is Failure The Road To Success?
Several people throughout my life have said something like "Failure is the road to success". I even noticed a little ad in the Wall Street Journal this week that used that quote. So do we really need to lead a life of failure to succeed? Does that make any sense to you? How could you possibly want success if you knew that your life was going to be littered with failure.
Is this why so many people just accept where they are in life? Doesn't everyone want to know how to be successful? If not, why wouldn't they want to be successful? Don't you want to be more successful than you are now?
Since a big part of my work now is helping other people become more successful, I started thinking about failure and its role in life after reading an article in the recent issue of INC magazine. A few of you will know my success principle of "Be careful who you listen too". For those of you that don't know it, one of the principles I live by, one that I consider one of the keys to my success, is that I don't take advice from anyone who isn't doing better than I am at the thing they are advising me on.
Real Estate Agents are a great example. A big chunk of them don't own a home, and a larger percentage don't own investment property. So how can they give me advice on something I am pretty good at, and they aren't really doing? My opinion is simply they can't. I got my own license about two years ago to do better for myself and help anyone who is serious about buying or selling. Don't call me if you are a "looky lou".
The recent INC magazine article was focused on Jim Collins of Good to Great fame and his work at The United States Military Academy.
Most of you know the United States Military Academy as "Westpoint". Many who know about it consider Westpoint the college for the elite army officers. The list of high achieving alumni supports this view.
According to INC magazine, Jim Collins learned a little about leadership while working with the cadets. As the article points out, Jim Collins has spent his life researching organization success, not personal success. Westpoint should have realized, that Mr. Collins isn't an expert at Military Leadership either, and as he learned these are very different things.
Another question I had to ask about the articles perspective; Is there a difference between organizational success and individual success? Can you have highly effective organizations that we call successful without having highly effective or "successful" people running it? I believe that one is required to have the other. An organization can hold back great people, and a great organization can be destroyed by lesser people being at the top. What I have read in Mr. Collins books lead me to believe that he agrees with my premise even though he doesn't directly say it.
My thoughts are that at the core of all great companies is great people. Do you think you can build a great company with idiots? This should be common sense right?
Some companies are better at collecting a higher percentage of successful people to create a more successful company. Others do a great job creating successful people who in turn create successful businesses. This was really the legacy of Jack Welch during his reign at GE isn't it? He created a great management and leadership funnel, the people that made it through the funnel made great companies.
Tommy Caldwell, considered one of the worlds best rock climbers, is attempting to be the first person ever to climb the face of El Cap in Yosemite park un assisted. This means he is going to do it with no ropes, no nails in the rocks, no hexectric nuts or link cams, just a man climbing a rock. I am sure he gets to wear the shoes though.
So far he has "failed" four times, and according to INC, when Jim Collins asked him why he goes back after failing, Tommy Caldwell replied that he was getting better each time. Tommy Caldwell didn't fail, he tried and improved. Just as the Japanese use Kaizen in business, Tommy Caldwell uses it in rock climbing.
Right there was the secret to crossing a long section of the road to success. Failure is not the road to success. Failure is failure. Moving forward on the road is how you get you to success. There is no other way.
Some of this may appear to be semantics, some of this is in "The Mind", and the reality is still that failure is failure and progress is progress no matter how you define it. Success does not come from failure. Success comes from moving forward no matter how difficult.
This point of view was a frustration I have had with many business improvement and self help books. They would use the word failure when referencing attempts to move forward. I really didn't address this issue correctly in the book So Now What?
As a competitive marksman, there were two competitions at every event, a team competition and an individual competition. The best victories where when the team won, even though I wanted to win also. In 1989, both happened, and it is the best victory in my career. I won the overall event, and the team won the team event. When that happened our margin was so big, I could have been third on my team and we would have still won. Nobody carried the team and nobody held the team back, the entire team kept pushing that year. There was never a failure, only opportunities to improve.
Thomas Edison had it correct when he was asked how it felt to fail at creating the electric light bulb 10,000 times. He replied, "I didn't fail 10,000 times, the lightbulb was an invention with 10,000 steps." It was an invention worth the journey. The bigger the prize at the end, or the bigger the contribution, the more difficult the journey will be. There are no short cuts.
Those who don't really want success will see the steps as too difficult and therefore a failure. Failure becomes an excuse to quit rather than a step forward. When you say to yourself that you have failed, you give yourself permission to quit and seek a new road. You change your definition of success to fit your failures. Failure is failure only if you don't learn from it and let it choose your direction.
This may seem like a very subtle difference in language and it really is. How you view the steps will determine if you make it to your destination or not. When you look at high achievers, they are still real people just like you and me. The difference starts with how they view failure, and how big their goals are. When things don't work and people laugh and ridicule, high achievers keep moving. They don't quit.
So why do people accept failure as failure? Simply put it is comfortable. Since none of their peers have done it, they don't feel the need to do it, and not doing it keep them at a level they are comfortable with. This can happen to anyone at any level in life.
The times in my life I wanted to quit are few but they happened. I have lived through and proven both sides of this process of the mind as it relates to failure and success. The most memorable for me was in 1990. I was ready to quit Air Force Pilot training because of a letter stating that I did "not have the attitude conducive to fly a fighter". It didn't say I wasn't qualified or I had failed, but I read it that way and I accepted the letter as failure.
Ready to walk away and return to my "comfortable" life, a friend, classmate and Air Force Academy Graduate, Mike Leonas, convinced me it was simply an opportunity to improve. Thanks to Mike I ended up having a great time flying in the military for the next 14 years.
If you really want to get where you are going, get better with each attempt. Get stronger at the core skill so you can push a little harder each time until you get "there" and can come up with a new place to go. More importantly, as Mike Leonas showed me, surround yourself with friends who don't understand failure, and truly understand opportunities to improve.
The journey really is the thing. Why do you think Richard Branson keeps building companies? When he gets to one destination, he keeps moving to another one. When Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, he continued to move towards his destination. When he came back, he brought Apple with him. Life is about the opportunities to improve.
Think about Elon Musk starting a new technically advanced car company that only offers 100% electric cars. He already had a successful business and was a billionaire, why risk it all to get into the car business and build a car that no one else builds? Didn't anyone tell him about the Tucker Car Company? Clearly at that level, Constant Improvement works.
Failure is not the road to success, failure isn't even on the road to success. The road to success is paved with little cobblestones of success and then taking one step to place the next stone. Always pushing a little more each time than you did the time before and getting closer to the goal each time is the key. Failure is when you quit, nothing more. This is why a coach can be such a big help.
Making each step better than the last is the key to success. Failure is how some people will define a step that doesn't end at success. The problem, like Edison found, is that you don't know how many steps that will be.
As the proverb goes, You are closest to success, just before you quit.
Get better at what ever you do every day and you will be called a success before you know it.
Is this why so many people just accept where they are in life? Doesn't everyone want to know how to be successful? If not, why wouldn't they want to be successful? Don't you want to be more successful than you are now?
Since a big part of my work now is helping other people become more successful, I started thinking about failure and its role in life after reading an article in the recent issue of INC magazine. A few of you will know my success principle of "Be careful who you listen too". For those of you that don't know it, one of the principles I live by, one that I consider one of the keys to my success, is that I don't take advice from anyone who isn't doing better than I am at the thing they are advising me on.
Real Estate Agents are a great example. A big chunk of them don't own a home, and a larger percentage don't own investment property. So how can they give me advice on something I am pretty good at, and they aren't really doing? My opinion is simply they can't. I got my own license about two years ago to do better for myself and help anyone who is serious about buying or selling. Don't call me if you are a "looky lou".
The recent INC magazine article was focused on Jim Collins of Good to Great fame and his work at The United States Military Academy.
Most of you know the United States Military Academy as "Westpoint". Many who know about it consider Westpoint the college for the elite army officers. The list of high achieving alumni supports this view.
According to INC magazine, Jim Collins learned a little about leadership while working with the cadets. As the article points out, Jim Collins has spent his life researching organization success, not personal success. Westpoint should have realized, that Mr. Collins isn't an expert at Military Leadership either, and as he learned these are very different things.
Another question I had to ask about the articles perspective; Is there a difference between organizational success and individual success? Can you have highly effective organizations that we call successful without having highly effective or "successful" people running it? I believe that one is required to have the other. An organization can hold back great people, and a great organization can be destroyed by lesser people being at the top. What I have read in Mr. Collins books lead me to believe that he agrees with my premise even though he doesn't directly say it.
My thoughts are that at the core of all great companies is great people. Do you think you can build a great company with idiots? This should be common sense right?
Some companies are better at collecting a higher percentage of successful people to create a more successful company. Others do a great job creating successful people who in turn create successful businesses. This was really the legacy of Jack Welch during his reign at GE isn't it? He created a great management and leadership funnel, the people that made it through the funnel made great companies.
Tommy Caldwell, considered one of the worlds best rock climbers, is attempting to be the first person ever to climb the face of El Cap in Yosemite park un assisted. This means he is going to do it with no ropes, no nails in the rocks, no hexectric nuts or link cams, just a man climbing a rock. I am sure he gets to wear the shoes though.
So far he has "failed" four times, and according to INC, when Jim Collins asked him why he goes back after failing, Tommy Caldwell replied that he was getting better each time. Tommy Caldwell didn't fail, he tried and improved. Just as the Japanese use Kaizen in business, Tommy Caldwell uses it in rock climbing.
Right there was the secret to crossing a long section of the road to success. Failure is not the road to success. Failure is failure. Moving forward on the road is how you get you to success. There is no other way.
Some of this may appear to be semantics, some of this is in "The Mind", and the reality is still that failure is failure and progress is progress no matter how you define it. Success does not come from failure. Success comes from moving forward no matter how difficult.
This point of view was a frustration I have had with many business improvement and self help books. They would use the word failure when referencing attempts to move forward. I really didn't address this issue correctly in the book So Now What?
As a competitive marksman, there were two competitions at every event, a team competition and an individual competition. The best victories where when the team won, even though I wanted to win also. In 1989, both happened, and it is the best victory in my career. I won the overall event, and the team won the team event. When that happened our margin was so big, I could have been third on my team and we would have still won. Nobody carried the team and nobody held the team back, the entire team kept pushing that year. There was never a failure, only opportunities to improve.
Thomas Edison had it correct when he was asked how it felt to fail at creating the electric light bulb 10,000 times. He replied, "I didn't fail 10,000 times, the lightbulb was an invention with 10,000 steps." It was an invention worth the journey. The bigger the prize at the end, or the bigger the contribution, the more difficult the journey will be. There are no short cuts.
Those who don't really want success will see the steps as too difficult and therefore a failure. Failure becomes an excuse to quit rather than a step forward. When you say to yourself that you have failed, you give yourself permission to quit and seek a new road. You change your definition of success to fit your failures. Failure is failure only if you don't learn from it and let it choose your direction.
This may seem like a very subtle difference in language and it really is. How you view the steps will determine if you make it to your destination or not. When you look at high achievers, they are still real people just like you and me. The difference starts with how they view failure, and how big their goals are. When things don't work and people laugh and ridicule, high achievers keep moving. They don't quit.
So why do people accept failure as failure? Simply put it is comfortable. Since none of their peers have done it, they don't feel the need to do it, and not doing it keep them at a level they are comfortable with. This can happen to anyone at any level in life.
The times in my life I wanted to quit are few but they happened. I have lived through and proven both sides of this process of the mind as it relates to failure and success. The most memorable for me was in 1990. I was ready to quit Air Force Pilot training because of a letter stating that I did "not have the attitude conducive to fly a fighter". It didn't say I wasn't qualified or I had failed, but I read it that way and I accepted the letter as failure.
Ready to walk away and return to my "comfortable" life, a friend, classmate and Air Force Academy Graduate, Mike Leonas, convinced me it was simply an opportunity to improve. Thanks to Mike I ended up having a great time flying in the military for the next 14 years.
If you really want to get where you are going, get better with each attempt. Get stronger at the core skill so you can push a little harder each time until you get "there" and can come up with a new place to go. More importantly, as Mike Leonas showed me, surround yourself with friends who don't understand failure, and truly understand opportunities to improve.
The journey really is the thing. Why do you think Richard Branson keeps building companies? When he gets to one destination, he keeps moving to another one. When Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, he continued to move towards his destination. When he came back, he brought Apple with him. Life is about the opportunities to improve.
Think about Elon Musk starting a new technically advanced car company that only offers 100% electric cars. He already had a successful business and was a billionaire, why risk it all to get into the car business and build a car that no one else builds? Didn't anyone tell him about the Tucker Car Company? Clearly at that level, Constant Improvement works.
Failure is not the road to success, failure isn't even on the road to success. The road to success is paved with little cobblestones of success and then taking one step to place the next stone. Always pushing a little more each time than you did the time before and getting closer to the goal each time is the key. Failure is when you quit, nothing more. This is why a coach can be such a big help.
Making each step better than the last is the key to success. Failure is how some people will define a step that doesn't end at success. The problem, like Edison found, is that you don't know how many steps that will be.
As the proverb goes, You are closest to success, just before you quit.
Get better at what ever you do every day and you will be called a success before you know it.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Would You Like To Know Something I Wish I Knew Then?
This has been an interesting year for some people, me included. The company that was my primary income declared bankruptcy, and became my secondary job in the same 12 month period. How you do you stay on the road to success when this happens?
Some of my friends have pinned their lives on various other events this year over which they have no control. Overall, my closest group of friends are all doing quite well when compared to last year and the year before. Sadly a few have become emotionally invested in events that they have no way to control or benefit from.
Why is that? The economic data says that people aren't doing better. They might be back at work but relative to inflation, average incomes are down, the cost of housing is on the rise and most people are struggling to make ends meet. So what is the difference between my friends who are doing better and everyone else? Do you want to know? I mean, do you REALLY want to know what success keys they have?
My question is for those of us that are a little farther along in life, what would you have liked to have really known 20 years ago? What knowledge would have changed your life? What would you do differently? I will tell you there are two main things that I would have done differently had I been given the right information. I have enough that I wish I knew to write a book. If I do, will you want to read it?
My next question for the younger people. Do you want to know? I am not sure that I would have at the time. My niece is more worried about her friends. My nephew though, his is paying attention.
In my 20's, I was on a mission to do something, the problem was that I didn't know what that something was. Even if I was given the right information, would I have done anything different? I almost think I was given the information, and ignored it because it didn't fit my world. What I needed was a real mentor, and I didn't have one. I had some great coaches though.
This week I took a class with Marki Costello. The Costello name comes directly from the "Abbot and Costello" comedy franchise. In the world of Hollywood, she is part of the royal circle. During the class I talked to a woman for two and a half minutes.
Marki said to "interview" this woman and only listen to what she was saying. All of my questions were supposed to be related to what she said. Sadly, I couldn't. The coach in me was fighting to get out, and yet while I did what I was supposed to do, she just said the same thing over and over. I listened and she never asked me for advice. She just told me how she was doing it. It was like looking in a time warped mirror. I could hear myself 20 years ago and wanted to reach over and tell her to shut up and listen. I wanted to set her straight, and show her why her life wasn't going where she wanted it too. I didn't.
This leads to the first lesson and the first thing I wish I had known. I don't mean known like I could tell my friends, but known like truly understood. There are some people who really know what they want early on in life. Jon Bon Jovi nailed it early on in life. Me? I was just goofing off with no direction. This woman had four jobs, and hasn't made real success at any of them. I have had four jobs and by most accounts I am now "successful" at all of them. She hasn't truly hit success in any of them and can't focus on any one of them. Sadly she is the only one in the way of her success.
It is funny that it worked out for me the way it did. As a kid I used to watch Family Ties with Michael J. Fox because I was the entrepreneur in the household of "safe" people. I used to read about interest rates, and how to make money in real estate all the way back to the 5th grade. Before that I was on TV as a kid on "Romper Room" and early reality TV on ABC's Junior All Star program.
Safe people can be like my in-laws and work for the government and get a check on the 1st and 15th, or like my parents and become doctors. My mom got a Ph.D. from Stanford and my Father was a Dentist who graduated from USC. It is just a different version of "safe" income. Their degrees were as reliable at getting jobs as the government was for my in-laws. So what did I do? I left home without finishing High School.
So would I listen? I don't know. Do you want to listen? I hope so.
The one thing I would change is the four job thing. While I am having a good time now, the individual struggles with each job delayed growth in others. Being in the top 10% of four jobs isn't nearly as rewarding as being in the top 1% of just one job.
My hindsight tells me that I focused on the wrong job first. John Travolta became an actor first, pilot second. I did it the other way around. I spent many more years to become a professional pilot before I could start in real estate as an investor and Realtor while working to build my knowledge of business and marketing. Finally I returned to acting part time a year ago. So who makes more money? John Travolta without a doubt. Who works less? I am guessing John Travolta.
I am not complaining about my life, rather I am pointing out that if I had known then what I know now, I would hope that I would approach things differently. I could do all of the same things and by simply changing the order, I could have been more successful at any one of them or all of them. If I knew then what I know now.
So my question to you is this. If I sat down with my high roller friends who are pilots, actors, real estate investors and business owners, living in million dollar homes, would you be interested in knowing what they wished they had known then? Would you change what you are doing now if they shared that knowledge?
That is what I want to know.
Some of my friends have pinned their lives on various other events this year over which they have no control. Overall, my closest group of friends are all doing quite well when compared to last year and the year before. Sadly a few have become emotionally invested in events that they have no way to control or benefit from.
Why is that? The economic data says that people aren't doing better. They might be back at work but relative to inflation, average incomes are down, the cost of housing is on the rise and most people are struggling to make ends meet. So what is the difference between my friends who are doing better and everyone else? Do you want to know? I mean, do you REALLY want to know what success keys they have?
My question is for those of us that are a little farther along in life, what would you have liked to have really known 20 years ago? What knowledge would have changed your life? What would you do differently? I will tell you there are two main things that I would have done differently had I been given the right information. I have enough that I wish I knew to write a book. If I do, will you want to read it?
My next question for the younger people. Do you want to know? I am not sure that I would have at the time. My niece is more worried about her friends. My nephew though, his is paying attention.
In my 20's, I was on a mission to do something, the problem was that I didn't know what that something was. Even if I was given the right information, would I have done anything different? I almost think I was given the information, and ignored it because it didn't fit my world. What I needed was a real mentor, and I didn't have one. I had some great coaches though.
This week I took a class with Marki Costello. The Costello name comes directly from the "Abbot and Costello" comedy franchise. In the world of Hollywood, she is part of the royal circle. During the class I talked to a woman for two and a half minutes.
Marki said to "interview" this woman and only listen to what she was saying. All of my questions were supposed to be related to what she said. Sadly, I couldn't. The coach in me was fighting to get out, and yet while I did what I was supposed to do, she just said the same thing over and over. I listened and she never asked me for advice. She just told me how she was doing it. It was like looking in a time warped mirror. I could hear myself 20 years ago and wanted to reach over and tell her to shut up and listen. I wanted to set her straight, and show her why her life wasn't going where she wanted it too. I didn't.
This leads to the first lesson and the first thing I wish I had known. I don't mean known like I could tell my friends, but known like truly understood. There are some people who really know what they want early on in life. Jon Bon Jovi nailed it early on in life. Me? I was just goofing off with no direction. This woman had four jobs, and hasn't made real success at any of them. I have had four jobs and by most accounts I am now "successful" at all of them. She hasn't truly hit success in any of them and can't focus on any one of them. Sadly she is the only one in the way of her success.
It is funny that it worked out for me the way it did. As a kid I used to watch Family Ties with Michael J. Fox because I was the entrepreneur in the household of "safe" people. I used to read about interest rates, and how to make money in real estate all the way back to the 5th grade. Before that I was on TV as a kid on "Romper Room" and early reality TV on ABC's Junior All Star program.
Safe people can be like my in-laws and work for the government and get a check on the 1st and 15th, or like my parents and become doctors. My mom got a Ph.D. from Stanford and my Father was a Dentist who graduated from USC. It is just a different version of "safe" income. Their degrees were as reliable at getting jobs as the government was for my in-laws. So what did I do? I left home without finishing High School.
So would I listen? I don't know. Do you want to listen? I hope so.
The one thing I would change is the four job thing. While I am having a good time now, the individual struggles with each job delayed growth in others. Being in the top 10% of four jobs isn't nearly as rewarding as being in the top 1% of just one job.
My hindsight tells me that I focused on the wrong job first. John Travolta became an actor first, pilot second. I did it the other way around. I spent many more years to become a professional pilot before I could start in real estate as an investor and Realtor while working to build my knowledge of business and marketing. Finally I returned to acting part time a year ago. So who makes more money? John Travolta without a doubt. Who works less? I am guessing John Travolta.
I am not complaining about my life, rather I am pointing out that if I had known then what I know now, I would hope that I would approach things differently. I could do all of the same things and by simply changing the order, I could have been more successful at any one of them or all of them. If I knew then what I know now.
So my question to you is this. If I sat down with my high roller friends who are pilots, actors, real estate investors and business owners, living in million dollar homes, would you be interested in knowing what they wished they had known then? Would you change what you are doing now if they shared that knowledge?
That is what I want to know.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Farming One Crop, or Multiple Crops For success which is better?
Have you ever felt that school was a waste of time? Have you ever been lost in a subject to the point you didn't know the time or even the day? How can it be that you absorb some things very well, and others topics of education can be so uninteresting that you have to work just to stay awake?
The reality is simple, and the truth isn't easy. As humans we are hard wired to have an interest in certain things. Those interests create the desire to learn more. No interest, no desire. Great teachers create interest first, lessons second. Boring lecturers spew out lessons and hope you can force or fake interest.
Technical schools and apprentice programs used to be the way of life, but corporations found these a bit too risky and pushed the responsibility to the government, which by the way gladly accepted. The problem was instead of allowing people to find an interesting path and become great at it, we were all lined up on boring roads and received somewhat generic educations. This is why the greatest technical companies like Hewlett-Packard, Bell Telephone (AT&T), Edison Electric and Apple were created by those that stepped out of the system and created their own learning path. They stayed interested.
So what does this have to do with Farming and Success? Much like school, life and business offer us a variety of ways to grow and succeed. The two Steve's of Apple, Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard, along with Mr. Bell and even Mr. Edison all showed us a different way to build success outside of the halls of education.
Ironically, farmers figured this out long before industrialization, and the lesson is one worth looking at.
In my coaching life, focus is a major element of my work. I spend a lot of hours with clients getting them to simplify and focus on a small number of important tasks and goals instead of giant, endless to do lists that are really just busy work to avoid the hard work that needs to be done.
Lately I have been called a hypocrite more than once. Besides coaching, I still fly, train our internet marketing staff, and am involved in real estate as an investor, trainer and agent. So the question I get is "How can you claim focus is so important when you have so many irons in the fire?"
To start with, I don't look at these like irons in the fire. I look at them like a farm. You can build one giant farm with one crop. As long as that crop does good, you will do great. The better you do the more land you can buy and the better you get at knowing how to get the most money from that crop per acre. You get the best prices on seeds, pesticides and labor because of the economy of scale and your ability to buy in quantity.
You can also build a farm that has several smaller crops of higher margin. By learning how to grow crops that help each other in pest prevention, soil conservation and nutrient usage, you can also create a great farm. You can never compete against the single crop neighbor on a price basis, and when the economy turns south, you might be in a riskier position. However, the single crop master farmer has to worry about a single shift ending his business. What if he grows sugar cane, and the government decides to tax sugar 100% because it causes health problems. He could be out of business overnight because you can't just change to tobacco in a day or even a month.
Starting a multi crop farm takes a different kind of focus. You must have a big picture of what you are trying to do overall, for instance create an organic farm, or a farm store. You must also focus on each crop one at a time until you learn them so each are a small success. Your sugar might only yield 80% as much per acre, but your higher quality can yield equal or higher profits per acre. Think Tiffany's.
When I sit down to write, I am a writer. When I go to the studio to act, I am an actor. I don't bring Real Estate to the studio, and I don't practice acting during open houses or when I am flying jets. When I fly jets, I look and act like a pilot. When I am in the Real Estate office working, training or attending a meeting, I look like a professional full time Realtor.
As I built my life, I did it in stages. I worked at flying jets until I was highly proficient and only need a few hours each month to maintain my skills. Then I could start classes for Real Estate. I worked at that as an investor for years and know have my methods down to simple checklists. I can evaluate an investment in less than 15 minutes.
Finally I could start acting classes and work at adding acting to my skill and income sets. Writing is really just an extension of my experience just like coaching is, but I still take classes to be better at both of them as well.
I would probably make a little more money if I just picked on, and did it all of the time. I am very fortunate to have started on my first path very early, and having stuck with it, was able to move on to the next with plenty of time on my life clock left.
In Flying will I ever be Bob Hoover? Nope.
In Real Estate Investing will I be Donald Trump? Nope.
In Acting will I be Tom Cruise or John Travolta or even Scott Baio? Nope.
In Writing will I be Steven King? Nope.
Can I do quite well at all of them individually so that the income and lifestyle add up to something like they live? Yes, and that is the life I designed for myself.
Because I built my life this way on purpose, I don't work at any one job. In fact I don't work at any of my jobs. They are all fun. I am doing now almost exactly what I want to do when I am "retired". It doesn't get any better than that.
So it doesn't matter which type of business or life you want to build, a single faceted super sized business/life or a multifaceted business/life. As long as you pick one, do it with purpose and take the time to develop each facet or perfect the single face of your business, success can be achieved either way. As long as there is a destination or goal to focus on you can do it. No destination, no focus, no achieving the goal.
As you head into the weekend, really take a look at what you want. A single mission business or do you want to do something more? I like getting small and medium checks daily from all kinds of sources. Some people need steady checks on the first and fifteenth, and others can do with one or two really big checks a year. What do you want?
You can start with a single business like real estate investing and turn it into a 100 Million Dollar empire like Dean Graziosi did and then the checks don't matter as much. Success really is that simple, it just isn't easy.
The reality is simple, and the truth isn't easy. As humans we are hard wired to have an interest in certain things. Those interests create the desire to learn more. No interest, no desire. Great teachers create interest first, lessons second. Boring lecturers spew out lessons and hope you can force or fake interest.
Technical schools and apprentice programs used to be the way of life, but corporations found these a bit too risky and pushed the responsibility to the government, which by the way gladly accepted. The problem was instead of allowing people to find an interesting path and become great at it, we were all lined up on boring roads and received somewhat generic educations. This is why the greatest technical companies like Hewlett-Packard, Bell Telephone (AT&T), Edison Electric and Apple were created by those that stepped out of the system and created their own learning path. They stayed interested.
So what does this have to do with Farming and Success? Much like school, life and business offer us a variety of ways to grow and succeed. The two Steve's of Apple, Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard, along with Mr. Bell and even Mr. Edison all showed us a different way to build success outside of the halls of education.
Ironically, farmers figured this out long before industrialization, and the lesson is one worth looking at.
In my coaching life, focus is a major element of my work. I spend a lot of hours with clients getting them to simplify and focus on a small number of important tasks and goals instead of giant, endless to do lists that are really just busy work to avoid the hard work that needs to be done.
Lately I have been called a hypocrite more than once. Besides coaching, I still fly, train our internet marketing staff, and am involved in real estate as an investor, trainer and agent. So the question I get is "How can you claim focus is so important when you have so many irons in the fire?"
To start with, I don't look at these like irons in the fire. I look at them like a farm. You can build one giant farm with one crop. As long as that crop does good, you will do great. The better you do the more land you can buy and the better you get at knowing how to get the most money from that crop per acre. You get the best prices on seeds, pesticides and labor because of the economy of scale and your ability to buy in quantity.
You can also build a farm that has several smaller crops of higher margin. By learning how to grow crops that help each other in pest prevention, soil conservation and nutrient usage, you can also create a great farm. You can never compete against the single crop neighbor on a price basis, and when the economy turns south, you might be in a riskier position. However, the single crop master farmer has to worry about a single shift ending his business. What if he grows sugar cane, and the government decides to tax sugar 100% because it causes health problems. He could be out of business overnight because you can't just change to tobacco in a day or even a month.
Starting a multi crop farm takes a different kind of focus. You must have a big picture of what you are trying to do overall, for instance create an organic farm, or a farm store. You must also focus on each crop one at a time until you learn them so each are a small success. Your sugar might only yield 80% as much per acre, but your higher quality can yield equal or higher profits per acre. Think Tiffany's.
When I sit down to write, I am a writer. When I go to the studio to act, I am an actor. I don't bring Real Estate to the studio, and I don't practice acting during open houses or when I am flying jets. When I fly jets, I look and act like a pilot. When I am in the Real Estate office working, training or attending a meeting, I look like a professional full time Realtor.
As I built my life, I did it in stages. I worked at flying jets until I was highly proficient and only need a few hours each month to maintain my skills. Then I could start classes for Real Estate. I worked at that as an investor for years and know have my methods down to simple checklists. I can evaluate an investment in less than 15 minutes.
Finally I could start acting classes and work at adding acting to my skill and income sets. Writing is really just an extension of my experience just like coaching is, but I still take classes to be better at both of them as well.
I would probably make a little more money if I just picked on, and did it all of the time. I am very fortunate to have started on my first path very early, and having stuck with it, was able to move on to the next with plenty of time on my life clock left.
In Flying will I ever be Bob Hoover? Nope.
In Real Estate Investing will I be Donald Trump? Nope.
In Acting will I be Tom Cruise or John Travolta or even Scott Baio? Nope.
In Writing will I be Steven King? Nope.
Can I do quite well at all of them individually so that the income and lifestyle add up to something like they live? Yes, and that is the life I designed for myself.
Because I built my life this way on purpose, I don't work at any one job. In fact I don't work at any of my jobs. They are all fun. I am doing now almost exactly what I want to do when I am "retired". It doesn't get any better than that.
So it doesn't matter which type of business or life you want to build, a single faceted super sized business/life or a multifaceted business/life. As long as you pick one, do it with purpose and take the time to develop each facet or perfect the single face of your business, success can be achieved either way. As long as there is a destination or goal to focus on you can do it. No destination, no focus, no achieving the goal.
As you head into the weekend, really take a look at what you want. A single mission business or do you want to do something more? I like getting small and medium checks daily from all kinds of sources. Some people need steady checks on the first and fifteenth, and others can do with one or two really big checks a year. What do you want?
You can start with a single business like real estate investing and turn it into a 100 Million Dollar empire like Dean Graziosi did and then the checks don't matter as much. Success really is that simple, it just isn't easy.
Monday, September 23, 2013
The Carrot and Stick For Higher Personal Performance and Success
I've been bouncing around the ideas of Activity - Reward and Carrot - Stick for business and personal success. This will be about personal success, because your business can't succeed if you aren't a success yourself.
To start I want to talk about "being" for a moment. In the Zen sense of it all "being" is just that. Basically meditating or doing something without effort or thought. When you do that you are just "being".
The problem is that most people don't have any ingrained survival skills any more when they are just "being". When a cat is "being" and it runs across a mouse, it will catch the mouse, and if it is hungry it will eat everything but the head. It saves the head as a gift for it's master. The cat is simply "being" a cat.
A buddhist monk can just be walking the monastery, growing food, preparing meals and meditating because they have trained to exist in this mode of being. Most of the rest of us haven't trained to survive and therefore succeed in any mode of being.
Socialization and industrialization has conditioned our ability to survive out of our "being". When we are hungry, we don't kill the next bird that fly's by and eat it do we? Leave a former Navy Seal alone on the street hungry, and he will. Why? Because he was conditioned back to a different level of survival and to him, being hungry simply means time to gather food. The bird is just food.
In order to succeed while you are just "being", you must first have a vision of who you want to be, where that person is going, what it took to get there, and then "become" the person who makes the journey from where you are today to the person you are "being" and therefore become.
Imagine a woman, broke, lonely and working at a dead end job barely able to make her rent. After going to a big self help conference she decides to set some huge goals and shoot for the stars. She decides that she is going to make $5 Million dollars this year. She goes home reads the books, thinks about making $5 Million a year, maybe even prays to make $5 Million a year. At the end of the day she keeps her same job, and at the end of the year, she gives up feeling that she failed because she wasn't making $5 Million for the year.
What went wrong? Aren't we supposed to "Think and Grow Rich"? The answer is a little more than just thinking about making $5 Million a year. Before you can be someone who makes $5 Million per year, you have to be that person who made $24,000 per year who then made $5 Million per year. "Being" a lottery winner or trust fund baby only works if you get lucky, and this isn't about luck or are born into a wealthy family, and this isn't about that either.
You can't pick your parents and you can't fix the lotto.
What I mean is this. If you want to make $5 Million per year, you have to find out about people who make $5 Million per year. They all did something to get where our woman wants to go. One of those people made the money in a way that she would find tolerable. Now she must "be" that person until it becomes part of her "being".
Before you can make the decision of who you will be, you need to know the sacrifices they made to get there. You have to be ready to make similar sacrifices. There are stories of many famous actors who finished great colleges or theater programs only to end up sleeping in their cars before their big break. If you want to be the next Brad Pitt, are you willing to sleep in your car? I know that "being" Brad Pitt isn't for me, and likewise this is where most people just walk away from big goals. They aren't willing to take the sticks and thorns of the path less traveled.
You will need to know what sacrifices they endured, what sticks they were hit with, which ones they respected and avoided. You should also know the little rewards they gave themselves on their own journey to the goal to keep moving when the journey appeared hopeless.
When you accept the sticks and carrots of the journey as your own life, then you can become someone on the journey. Only then are you "being" the person who WILL make $5 Million per year instead of the failure who didn't make $5 Million per year.
Setting goals that you don't reach is a downward spin you need to stay out of. You can only do that by understanding and accepting the real costs of your goals and "being" the person that pays the price to make the journey and achieve the goals.
"Being" is easier when you know what the carrots and sticks are and are willing to take them both anytime they happen.
To start I want to talk about "being" for a moment. In the Zen sense of it all "being" is just that. Basically meditating or doing something without effort or thought. When you do that you are just "being".
The problem is that most people don't have any ingrained survival skills any more when they are just "being". When a cat is "being" and it runs across a mouse, it will catch the mouse, and if it is hungry it will eat everything but the head. It saves the head as a gift for it's master. The cat is simply "being" a cat.
A buddhist monk can just be walking the monastery, growing food, preparing meals and meditating because they have trained to exist in this mode of being. Most of the rest of us haven't trained to survive and therefore succeed in any mode of being.
Socialization and industrialization has conditioned our ability to survive out of our "being". When we are hungry, we don't kill the next bird that fly's by and eat it do we? Leave a former Navy Seal alone on the street hungry, and he will. Why? Because he was conditioned back to a different level of survival and to him, being hungry simply means time to gather food. The bird is just food.
In order to succeed while you are just "being", you must first have a vision of who you want to be, where that person is going, what it took to get there, and then "become" the person who makes the journey from where you are today to the person you are "being" and therefore become.
Imagine a woman, broke, lonely and working at a dead end job barely able to make her rent. After going to a big self help conference she decides to set some huge goals and shoot for the stars. She decides that she is going to make $5 Million dollars this year. She goes home reads the books, thinks about making $5 Million a year, maybe even prays to make $5 Million a year. At the end of the day she keeps her same job, and at the end of the year, she gives up feeling that she failed because she wasn't making $5 Million for the year.
What went wrong? Aren't we supposed to "Think and Grow Rich"? The answer is a little more than just thinking about making $5 Million a year. Before you can be someone who makes $5 Million per year, you have to be that person who made $24,000 per year who then made $5 Million per year. "Being" a lottery winner or trust fund baby only works if you get lucky, and this isn't about luck or are born into a wealthy family, and this isn't about that either.
You can't pick your parents and you can't fix the lotto.
What I mean is this. If you want to make $5 Million per year, you have to find out about people who make $5 Million per year. They all did something to get where our woman wants to go. One of those people made the money in a way that she would find tolerable. Now she must "be" that person until it becomes part of her "being".
Before you can make the decision of who you will be, you need to know the sacrifices they made to get there. You have to be ready to make similar sacrifices. There are stories of many famous actors who finished great colleges or theater programs only to end up sleeping in their cars before their big break. If you want to be the next Brad Pitt, are you willing to sleep in your car? I know that "being" Brad Pitt isn't for me, and likewise this is where most people just walk away from big goals. They aren't willing to take the sticks and thorns of the path less traveled.
You will need to know what sacrifices they endured, what sticks they were hit with, which ones they respected and avoided. You should also know the little rewards they gave themselves on their own journey to the goal to keep moving when the journey appeared hopeless.
When you accept the sticks and carrots of the journey as your own life, then you can become someone on the journey. Only then are you "being" the person who WILL make $5 Million per year instead of the failure who didn't make $5 Million per year.
Setting goals that you don't reach is a downward spin you need to stay out of. You can only do that by understanding and accepting the real costs of your goals and "being" the person that pays the price to make the journey and achieve the goals.
"Being" is easier when you know what the carrots and sticks are and are willing to take them both anytime they happen.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
The Carrot and The Stick Management Theory
After earning my business degree, my desire to learn didn't stop. I studied Jack Welch of GE and the idea of Six Sigma. Get rid of the bottom 10%, there is a stick for sure.
A few people out there clearly won't accept my idea that some form of punishment or "stick" is required in business, and with children. They will quickly point out that I am not a psychologist, nor do I have kids.
As a Co-Pilot on a big jet, there is a lot going on. You can't see what the guy is doing behind you and are lucky to keep up with the guy to your left when you first start out. As you move into the left seat and become the "Captain" or "Aircraft Commander", you get a better view. You can see more of what is going on and make better decisions. You don't become myopic as easily.
When you become and instructor and sit in the jump seat behind the two or three pilots, you become amazingly visionary. Since you aren't actually doing anything, you see everything. This is what coaches do for a business. They stand back and look at the bigger picture, one owners and managers rarely see because they are "in" the business and get focused on some specific aspect causing them to be myopic.
In flying the "stick" when you do something really wrong is that somebody gets hurt. Look at all of the aviation accidents, and then consider how safe flying still is. The respect (not fear) of the "stick" is what keeps 99.9999% of all flights safe. The next time an airliner stops for fuel, don't get mad at the pilots, thank them for not making you part of the punishment for being too aggressive on fuel.
To the people who say the stick isn't required, my rebut is simple. Why are so many people incarcerated at such a high expense if the stick isn't required. Deep down we all know the stick is required, but in our society of political correctness, we have made the stick soft. Gym's, TV, three squares, baseball fields and movie nights? While incarceration might sound bad to most of us. Not enough of us respect or fear that stick, so too many end up getting hit by it.
My guess is the incarceration has more carrots than life on the outside for many of the people who are inside the high concrete walls. Instead of spending $100,000 per year per inmate, why don't we spend $25,000 per year to help them become productive people? Why don't we start with our children and get realistic on teaching them how life really works instead of trying to be "fair" to all of them.
As far as my experience with kids goes, my wife is a 20 year veteran of the 2nd grade classroom with an MBA. I don't ever recall seeing her classes out of control or rambunctious, but I have seen many others. Her techniques in the classroom are a big part of how we treat our niece and nephew when they stay with us.
My niece and nephew visit for extended periods because they live in other states. Weekend visits aren't practical. When they visit, we don't have any trouble with them at all. Neither of them have ever done anything to deserve capital punishment while they are with us. They didn't get "Time Out" either, I think that is a joke. Getting sent to their room? In my house that is a multimedia entertainment room any kid would like to get sent to. Our stick? Easy, supervised chores with no reward. When they did chores without being told too or without supervision and did them correctly, the same chores came with rewards.
When my nephew first came to stay for the summer he was an easy bribe. A trip to the local Sonic on Friday, in the convertible, for an ice cream with just me, was the reward. He wanted "Guy Time" and I work crazy hours. So if he did his end of the deal, I would take time away from work to do my end.
The chore? His room had to be picked up and his bed made every day for two weeks. Did it work? Yes. Did it take a little nudge the first couple of nights, yes. He was just five years old. He made his bed every day on the last visit with only one reminder. He is 11.
By the time my nephew returned to my sister, his bed was made every day, and he picked his own reward for bigger and better chores. The neat room and bed were just what he did after four weeks and two trips to the local Sonic. He started asking to help me with more work around the property so he could spend more time with me or the other boys on the street.
When was the last time your kids asked for more work?
Am I an expert at raising kids? Nope. Was I successful with my nephew when I had the chance? I think so.
So the next two questions of course are:
1. How do I apply this to managing people?
2. How do I apply this to perform better myself?
Come back next week.....
A few people out there clearly won't accept my idea that some form of punishment or "stick" is required in business, and with children. They will quickly point out that I am not a psychologist, nor do I have kids.
As a Co-Pilot on a big jet, there is a lot going on. You can't see what the guy is doing behind you and are lucky to keep up with the guy to your left when you first start out. As you move into the left seat and become the "Captain" or "Aircraft Commander", you get a better view. You can see more of what is going on and make better decisions. You don't become myopic as easily.
When you become and instructor and sit in the jump seat behind the two or three pilots, you become amazingly visionary. Since you aren't actually doing anything, you see everything. This is what coaches do for a business. They stand back and look at the bigger picture, one owners and managers rarely see because they are "in" the business and get focused on some specific aspect causing them to be myopic.
In flying the "stick" when you do something really wrong is that somebody gets hurt. Look at all of the aviation accidents, and then consider how safe flying still is. The respect (not fear) of the "stick" is what keeps 99.9999% of all flights safe. The next time an airliner stops for fuel, don't get mad at the pilots, thank them for not making you part of the punishment for being too aggressive on fuel.
To the people who say the stick isn't required, my rebut is simple. Why are so many people incarcerated at such a high expense if the stick isn't required. Deep down we all know the stick is required, but in our society of political correctness, we have made the stick soft. Gym's, TV, three squares, baseball fields and movie nights? While incarceration might sound bad to most of us. Not enough of us respect or fear that stick, so too many end up getting hit by it.
My guess is the incarceration has more carrots than life on the outside for many of the people who are inside the high concrete walls. Instead of spending $100,000 per year per inmate, why don't we spend $25,000 per year to help them become productive people? Why don't we start with our children and get realistic on teaching them how life really works instead of trying to be "fair" to all of them.
As far as my experience with kids goes, my wife is a 20 year veteran of the 2nd grade classroom with an MBA. I don't ever recall seeing her classes out of control or rambunctious, but I have seen many others. Her techniques in the classroom are a big part of how we treat our niece and nephew when they stay with us.
My niece and nephew visit for extended periods because they live in other states. Weekend visits aren't practical. When they visit, we don't have any trouble with them at all. Neither of them have ever done anything to deserve capital punishment while they are with us. They didn't get "Time Out" either, I think that is a joke. Getting sent to their room? In my house that is a multimedia entertainment room any kid would like to get sent to. Our stick? Easy, supervised chores with no reward. When they did chores without being told too or without supervision and did them correctly, the same chores came with rewards.
When my nephew first came to stay for the summer he was an easy bribe. A trip to the local Sonic on Friday, in the convertible, for an ice cream with just me, was the reward. He wanted "Guy Time" and I work crazy hours. So if he did his end of the deal, I would take time away from work to do my end.
The chore? His room had to be picked up and his bed made every day for two weeks. Did it work? Yes. Did it take a little nudge the first couple of nights, yes. He was just five years old. He made his bed every day on the last visit with only one reminder. He is 11.
By the time my nephew returned to my sister, his bed was made every day, and he picked his own reward for bigger and better chores. The neat room and bed were just what he did after four weeks and two trips to the local Sonic. He started asking to help me with more work around the property so he could spend more time with me or the other boys on the street.
When was the last time your kids asked for more work?
Am I an expert at raising kids? Nope. Was I successful with my nephew when I had the chance? I think so.
So the next two questions of course are:
1. How do I apply this to managing people?
2. How do I apply this to perform better myself?
Come back next week.....
Monday, September 9, 2013
What Is The "Paradise" You Are Seeking?
A few months back, my wife and I took a class from another coaching couple, a very nice husband and wife team. I take these classes two or three times a year and they can cost several thousand per class.
Sometimes I end up finding it a waste of money and other times picking up a tidbit that I didn't understand and can now use to help my own clients.
Over the years I have had several clients who clearly needed help that I didn't feel I could help, so I am always looking to improve my understanding so I can help more people do better.
The burning questions for me are: How come everyone doesn't want to be successful? How come everyone who wants to be successful isn't? How come some people make success look so easy?
Walking in to this class I wondered if it would help me understand more than any other? I always think this walking in the door. Attending two or three seminars every year, I get some good techniques about 50% of the time. Rarely do I gain any more understanding.
This class was different, the teachers gave me a huge question to answer. The class didn't give me any new understandings. What it gave me was a new way to ask my questions.
I agreed with 90% of everything the presenters said. It was the last 10% that got to me. Their premise was very much oriented in "Eastern Philosophy". Many traits of Buddhism were taught, but then he said something to the effect of, "Meditation is a waste of time". I just thought to myself "You are doing it wrong".
Many people meditate without knowing it. A very successful CEO I met once told me that no matter how bad things got at the office, he would jump on his Jet Ski, and go as fast as he could around the lake. When he got back he had all of the answers he needed and his world was right. He was meditating at 70 mph on water with no helmet. The front of your mind needs 100% of its focus to keep you alive, so it can't mess with the real thinking in the back. This was a great insight at the time.
My motorcycles did the same for me many years ago, today it is surfing.
The last day of the three days that was supposed to bring the class together is where it fell apart for me and several others who approached me afterwards.
The teachers tried to tell us that we were all seeking a "paradise" that doesn't exist any longer. That paradise was the perfect world we had from birth until we became aware we existed. The point where we stopped "being". They claimed paradise was lost forever and wan unobtainable and therefore why we were so unhappy.
In our infantile paradise, everything we wanted was taken care of my other people while we were "being". In the lead teachers words, being 100% cared for by others is "Paradise", and one that you can never achieve. You want food, it is right there, you want sleep, you just do it. A perfect world we can never get back.
The teachers tried to tell us that we were all seeking a "paradise" that doesn't exist any longer. That paradise was the perfect world we had from birth until we became aware we existed. The point where we stopped "being". They claimed paradise was lost forever and wan unobtainable and therefore why we were so unhappy.
In our infantile paradise, everything we wanted was taken care of my other people while we were "being". In the lead teachers words, being 100% cared for by others is "Paradise", and one that you can never achieve. You want food, it is right there, you want sleep, you just do it. A perfect world we can never get back.
Given the First Lady's staff, I think she is pretty darn close.
Actually I was still with him and so was the entire class, but then he leapt right over an area that I had been talking about for years and went straight into success techniques. The problem I had, and several people discussed afterwards was that chasm between being and success. If there is no "Paradise" what are we working so hard for? If we are just "being", then why are we suddenly talking about all this "getting and doing"? What is the connection? What is the reason? Why?
I have touched on this new set of questions a couple of times already, but I haven't had a clear answer I could communicate until now. It has been bothering me because there have been people that I couldn't help and I didn't know why. Now I think I do. I also understand very clearly my angst and frustration with my business and life in Texas. My wife calls it our "experiment" and she is right.
While I agree with the seminars coaches that the "paradise" of our infancy can never be revisited, I do think there is a paradise we can achieve in little bits. I also think that we can find a purpose for our journey through life other than simply "being" here.
It is the definition of "paradise" and how we were raised as children that makes the difference. His description of his childhood fits this pattern of having a limited view of paradise. I will use living in paradise interchangeably with living happily. Yes you are allowed to be happy most of the time.
It is the definition of "paradise" and how we were raised as children that makes the difference. His description of his childhood fits this pattern of having a limited view of paradise. I will use living in paradise interchangeably with living happily. Yes you are allowed to be happy most of the time.
Follow me on this one, because it begins to explain a lot.
A child who is raised with a lot of "responsibility" and "reward", has lots of little "paradises" to seek. Being the oldest boy in my household, I had the most of both. All of those little rewards are my "paradise", achieving things makes me happy. Seeing things not happening makes me stressed and unhappy. Think of it as a giant jig saw puzzle, and each reward is a piece that makes a picture of my paradise.
95% of my rewards revolved around life in Southern California. My mother was born here, my father was born here and his father too. Texas didn't work like I hoped because my "rewards" and therefore "paradise" weren't there, they were here in Southern California. Texas people were great, the lifestyle was fun, but it wasn't my "paradise". I couldn't do what I wanted to do, and things didn't get done in a way that made me happy. The old dog wasn't ready to learn new tricks.*
Each time I got a reward for doing good work, I added a new piece to my jig saw puzzle of paradise. For kids who didn't get that many rewards, they don't have a good picture to look at. I think this makes it harder for them to create purpose. For them "being" is an easier answer. This is where a real mentor or coach can make all of the difference in the world. A mentor can build rewards for adults that can become their paradise.
Of course we had punishment in my house too. It would make a great study to figure out the perfect number of rewards and the reward/punishment ratio that successful people grew up with.
The more business owners that I work with who see great change, the more I find they had this responsibility-reward cycle in their house as a child with a very stern, fair and seldom used punishment. My wife really didn't have much of either reward or punishment, so she is much more centered than I am. She is closer to "being" than I can ever be in the way the class was being taught.
One of the problems many business owners face in business is that the customers don't always reward like parents did. Do a great job, get a great check doesn't always happen. The trick that I have started teaching and using myself is finding little rewards along the way that build up to bigger ones as the person achieves greater success. Very smart companies have figured this out and reward employees well. Look at the millionaire list at Apple, Cisco and Microsoft. The success of the company created success for the employee.
I touched on this topic a little bit in the book "So, Now What?" and will do so in much greater depth in the next one. There is also a better version of "being" when you have a good understanding of your wants, don't wants and challenges.
The best rewards in my "Paradise Puzzle Picture" were the time and love of my parents. Get good grades, go flying with Dad. Mow the yard, get a Tastee-Freez with Mom. Keep your room up for a month go to Disneyland. Punch your brother, one good swat and no ski trip.
I realize now this is why I am a self starter. I have projects running all the time and at the end of each one is a little (or big) reward.
I may not live in "Paradise" every day all the time, but I have a life I want to live and look forward too every day. That sounds like happiness and paradise to me.
If you have kids, what can you do to help them build their "Paradise Puzzle Picture"?
If you want to improve your life, use the "Want, Don't Want and Challenges" white board exercise to help you find those puzzle pieces and eliminate the puzzle pieces that someone else gave you or you just don't want.
Finally, build your picture of paradise, and your list of little rewards, big rewards and goals. You will find that you get more done than you ever thought possible and you'll have fun and feel good about doing it.
*Another author recently said "Once you live at the beach, you can never not live at the beach".
Finally, build your picture of paradise, and your list of little rewards, big rewards and goals. You will find that you get more done than you ever thought possible and you'll have fun and feel good about doing it.
*Another author recently said "Once you live at the beach, you can never not live at the beach".
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Finish One Thing At A Time To Succeed
This week has proven quite interesting in all areas of my work. Like most entrepreneurs, I am a little ADD or ADHD or something like that. My mind is always spinning at all hours of the day and night. I got up at 3am this morning with ideas just pouring out.
I met two different business owners who had the exact same problem. They had major projects somewhere between 70 and 80% complete and we already looking to the next project. The problem was they weren't finishing the ones they already started. Do you know anyone who has trouble finishing a project?
If this is you or someone you know, you might like to know why this happens. To begin with we start projects for a couple of reasons. One of them is to prove we can do it. The problem here is that you don't actually need to finish the project to see that you can. When this happens, you get bored, realizing that there is no question that you can finish, and you start looking elsewhere.
The problem I have with this is that you can't win until you finish. This is true in life, racing and projects. Imagine if you got on my flight to Dallas and we went 80% of the way and got on the PA and said "OK folks, you have seen that we made it this far, and we are sure you all believe we can make it the rest of the way so we are stopping in Austin so we can go do something else." Crazy right? And yet we do it every day.
Following through on a project or task until it is completed isn't easy. Anyone can enter the race, and many can run a lot of laps. Only a few will finish, and only one will win.
When these business owners come to me short on patience, money, time and focus while looking at the next project, it is easy to see why they are right where they are.
Imagine if I were a real estate investor and I kept buying property. First I bought a condo, cleaned it up, got it ready to rent, and said "See, I can be a condo landlord" without ever actually renting it. Then I went and bought a house, cleaned it up, got it ready to flip and said "See I can flip a house" without ever selling it. I would go broke doing this, and this is exactly what I see business owner after business owner do over and over.
I must admit, I have done it too.
So what is the solution? The simple solution is not to start a new project until the old project is truly complete. Simple yes, obvious yes, easy, no. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
One of the keys to success is knowing what you want to do before you start, and then finishing it before you start something else. I can't fly a jet while I am still racing a car. Why do we try to start one business when the first one still isn't complete?
If you start, commit to finishing before moving on, and you will see your success sooner than you think possible.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Success Tip: Be Careful Who You Listen To
Success Tips are simple rules that when followed, will help you lead a better life. At least they help me when I use them and prove to me that I need to use them when I don't.
For years I have had a "Rule # 1". And now with close friends and family, if they ask a question and rule #1 applies, that is my answer.
I think this is going to be "Rule # 2"
Rule # 2 simply states, Be Careful Who You Listen Too.
I can hear you asking "What does that mean anyway?". "Be Careful Who You Listen To" means just that. If you want car advice, don't ask a guy who keeps cars for 10 years and thinks the one he has is junk. Go find the most knowledgeable person you know about cars. Rarely is that a car salesman, but there is a BMW dealer near me who has a world champion driver working there as a salesperson.
One of my most expensive lessons in business came when I listened to a banker about how to run my business. Big mistake. Bankers don't run businesses, they run banks. Banks are a very sheltered business protected by the government. I never asked any of the three bankers I was working with if they had run a business. If I had the answer would have been "No." I wasn't careful who I listened to.
When you want to learn Yoga, asking your neighbor that took a class at the park four years ago might be easy, but it won't teach you Yoga. Find a master. When you want to learn how to hit a golf ball farther, don't ask the four guys in your foursome unless one is a PGA instructor, or is a touring PGA Player or has a wall of golf trophies. Even the wall of trophies doesn't mean he can teach.
There is a big difference between doing, teaching and being able to do both. In any area of life you might become a teacher, a master and in some very rare cases, a teaching-master. I have a wall of trophies and patches from bowling. My grandfather was a master teacher and produced several champions. My aunt was an LPGA bowler for many years.
Last night I tried to teach my eleven year old nephew how to bowl. I could talk him through the steps and throw a strike each time. When he tried it looked nothing like what I thought it should and in the gutter the ball went. I am not a teaching-master bowler.
We always like to ask our friends and family for advice because it is easy. Like anything else, when you take the easy route you are pretty likely to get the easy payback. Taking the time to go find someone who really understands what you are trying to do or what you want to learn won't be easy.
If you want to learn guitar, a teacher at the local community college, guitar store or even those DVD's at the big box store might get you started, but eventually if you want to move to the next level, you'll need a real coach, a teaching-master.
The biggest trick is knowing who the real coaches are. As a retired military instructor pilot and airline pilot, if you came to me to ask about crosswind landing techniques in a piper cub, I might just be the wrong guy. If you want to learn crosswind landing techniques in a 737, 757 or DC-10, I might be the right guy.
Not having children I have a lot more time than people who don't. Because of this, I now have a couple of different "jobs". Not because I want them so much as I am just pretty good at them and I am having fun with them.
In todays home market more than ever, being careful who you listen too can save you a lot of time, money and hassle. Better yet, it can put you into a better equity position meaning you can make money when you sell, and you'll get a better deal if that is important to you.
I am amazed at how many agents in Southern California are still renting. How can you tell someone to buy or sell a home when you aren't even in the market? I own my home and and always on the lookout for deals to invest in for the long term or flip. I am addicted to the game of real estate. More importantly I have made money as a flipper and a long term landlord. Not many agents or brokers can say that. You can get all the abbreviations you want after your name, and still not make money in real estate.
This doesn't mean I can teach real estate. It also doesn't mean I can't. It does mean I am in a very small group of people, many of whom don't want you to know how to do it. This is the tricky part, separating the masters from the teaching-masters. I'll tell you now, don't ask me about bowling.
Keep in mind that most realtors only make money when you buy or sell your home. Yes I am glad to take the listing if you live in my area, but I also want to make sure I am doing you a service beyond just selling your home. I want to help you accomplish something.
I find the stock and financial markets the same way. Financial advisors approach me all the time wanting to "manage" my money. When I ask what they own or how big their portfolio is or what there returns are I get some pretty funny responses. Understanding that their job is to "manage assets" or "sell" stocks, their motivation is clear. It isn't to make me the most money, it is to make them the most money while keeping me as a client.
Warren Buffet is a master of finance. I found out the books he read, and I read them. I also read a book with his name on the cover. Even though I can't afford to hire Warren Buffet, it doesn't mean I can't still learn from him and follow his strategy.
The first challenge of stepping out of the herd is to accept that you won't be in the herd any longer. This is very uncomfortable for most people, so they won't push to get better. Once you accept the price of fame and fortune, then you can go seek experts in areas that you want to learn more about.
Henry Ford was famously called out for being ignorant even though he was one of the richest men in the world during his time. After failing to answer a series of questions, he finally said something to the effect of "Why do I need to know this when I can push a button on my desk and summon someone who can find the answer for me?"
There is genius in the answer. First know what you know, stick to what you need to know and surround yourself by people who can do or know anything else that might come up. A simple mechanic at 40, the richest man in the world at 60. That is an expert you can listen too.
For years I have had a "Rule # 1". And now with close friends and family, if they ask a question and rule #1 applies, that is my answer.
I think this is going to be "Rule # 2"
Rule # 2 simply states, Be Careful Who You Listen Too.
I can hear you asking "What does that mean anyway?". "Be Careful Who You Listen To" means just that. If you want car advice, don't ask a guy who keeps cars for 10 years and thinks the one he has is junk. Go find the most knowledgeable person you know about cars. Rarely is that a car salesman, but there is a BMW dealer near me who has a world champion driver working there as a salesperson.
One of my most expensive lessons in business came when I listened to a banker about how to run my business. Big mistake. Bankers don't run businesses, they run banks. Banks are a very sheltered business protected by the government. I never asked any of the three bankers I was working with if they had run a business. If I had the answer would have been "No." I wasn't careful who I listened to.
When you want to learn Yoga, asking your neighbor that took a class at the park four years ago might be easy, but it won't teach you Yoga. Find a master. When you want to learn how to hit a golf ball farther, don't ask the four guys in your foursome unless one is a PGA instructor, or is a touring PGA Player or has a wall of golf trophies. Even the wall of trophies doesn't mean he can teach.
There is a big difference between doing, teaching and being able to do both. In any area of life you might become a teacher, a master and in some very rare cases, a teaching-master. I have a wall of trophies and patches from bowling. My grandfather was a master teacher and produced several champions. My aunt was an LPGA bowler for many years.
Last night I tried to teach my eleven year old nephew how to bowl. I could talk him through the steps and throw a strike each time. When he tried it looked nothing like what I thought it should and in the gutter the ball went. I am not a teaching-master bowler.
We always like to ask our friends and family for advice because it is easy. Like anything else, when you take the easy route you are pretty likely to get the easy payback. Taking the time to go find someone who really understands what you are trying to do or what you want to learn won't be easy.
If you want to learn guitar, a teacher at the local community college, guitar store or even those DVD's at the big box store might get you started, but eventually if you want to move to the next level, you'll need a real coach, a teaching-master.
The biggest trick is knowing who the real coaches are. As a retired military instructor pilot and airline pilot, if you came to me to ask about crosswind landing techniques in a piper cub, I might just be the wrong guy. If you want to learn crosswind landing techniques in a 737, 757 or DC-10, I might be the right guy.
Not having children I have a lot more time than people who don't. Because of this, I now have a couple of different "jobs". Not because I want them so much as I am just pretty good at them and I am having fun with them.
In todays home market more than ever, being careful who you listen too can save you a lot of time, money and hassle. Better yet, it can put you into a better equity position meaning you can make money when you sell, and you'll get a better deal if that is important to you.
I am amazed at how many agents in Southern California are still renting. How can you tell someone to buy or sell a home when you aren't even in the market? I own my home and and always on the lookout for deals to invest in for the long term or flip. I am addicted to the game of real estate. More importantly I have made money as a flipper and a long term landlord. Not many agents or brokers can say that. You can get all the abbreviations you want after your name, and still not make money in real estate.
This doesn't mean I can teach real estate. It also doesn't mean I can't. It does mean I am in a very small group of people, many of whom don't want you to know how to do it. This is the tricky part, separating the masters from the teaching-masters. I'll tell you now, don't ask me about bowling.
Keep in mind that most realtors only make money when you buy or sell your home. Yes I am glad to take the listing if you live in my area, but I also want to make sure I am doing you a service beyond just selling your home. I want to help you accomplish something.
I find the stock and financial markets the same way. Financial advisors approach me all the time wanting to "manage" my money. When I ask what they own or how big their portfolio is or what there returns are I get some pretty funny responses. Understanding that their job is to "manage assets" or "sell" stocks, their motivation is clear. It isn't to make me the most money, it is to make them the most money while keeping me as a client.
Warren Buffet is a master of finance. I found out the books he read, and I read them. I also read a book with his name on the cover. Even though I can't afford to hire Warren Buffet, it doesn't mean I can't still learn from him and follow his strategy.
The first challenge of stepping out of the herd is to accept that you won't be in the herd any longer. This is very uncomfortable for most people, so they won't push to get better. Once you accept the price of fame and fortune, then you can go seek experts in areas that you want to learn more about.
Henry Ford was famously called out for being ignorant even though he was one of the richest men in the world during his time. After failing to answer a series of questions, he finally said something to the effect of "Why do I need to know this when I can push a button on my desk and summon someone who can find the answer for me?"
There is genius in the answer. First know what you know, stick to what you need to know and surround yourself by people who can do or know anything else that might come up. A simple mechanic at 40, the richest man in the world at 60. That is an expert you can listen too.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Living the Up Life, Jawbone Up That Is.
The Jawbone Up is the nerds jewelry. It doesn’t tell time, and it doesn’t even have a display like a Nike Fuel. Techies like me spot them across the room, and non-techies stop me to ask regularly.
I received a Nike Fuel as a birthday gift, and as cool as it was, the privacy policy was totally unacceptable to me. I clicked “do not accept” and a window popped up to return the Nike Fuel.
After reading the Jawbone privacy policy, I decided to get the Jawbone Up instead. The idea of tracking activity smarter just makes sense when you are trying to get in better shape or lose weight.
The Nike Fuel is a more comfortable design and is less bulky, but after living with a Jawbone Up on my wrist nearly 24x7 for a week, I guess I am getting used to it. I have also learned a lot of cool tricks and found a few annoyances.
On the annoyance side, you have to tell it what you are doing all the time. Nike Fuel owners feel free to chime in here if it is the same or smarter. For instance, I really like the idea that the Jawbone Up monitors my sleep patterns and makes sure I wake from a light sleep rather than a deep sleep. The problem is I forgot to tell it I went to sleep last night, somehow it should know.
I also have been watching how activities are logged. If I ride my bike for an hour and forget to set it into “stopwatch” mode, I’ll get some crazy number of steps added to my day which I haven’t figured out how to edit and change into bike riding. Even flying airplanes, I get credit for some steps. I plugged in the Up to sync before the flight moved and again when we landed. I did 456 steps according to the Jawbone Up. The reality was I didn't move my butt out of the seat at all for over three hours. I expected the "idle" alert to go off.
If I put the Jawbone Up in stopwatch mode by pushing the button once and then holding it in on a second push until it buzzes allows me to log all kinds of land based activity. It would be nice if I could swim with it.
My favorite feature on the Jawbone Up is “power nap”. I had about a two hour break today, and only slept four hours last night due to my crazy life. I found a nice reclining chair, put in earplugs, and 23 minutes later my power nap was over. I didn’t feel like I got all of my sleep but I did feel notably better. Normally I would have been afraid to wear earplugs because I have been known to crash so hard that I don’t hear dogs barking or the alarm going off and have missed important appointments due to it.
Fully reclined and totally unaware of the world around me, I felt a gentle buzz on my arm and just woke up nice and easy. The power nap feature is reason enough to own a Jawbone Up for me with my crazy life.
The only other real annoyance, and it could be that I have a bad one, is the battery life. My Jawbone Up, never turns green after charging for well over two hours. The manual online says a full charge should take about 80 minutes. My wife’s Jawbone Up turned green after just 60 minutes on the initial charge and 70 minutes the second time and her battery has also lasted the advertised 10 days. My Jawbone Up is only going about five days between charges. Maybe I’ll call Jawbone about a replacement, but not until after I take another little power nap.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Who Do You See In Your Mirror? Survivor, Dreamer or Visionary
What mode are you in, survivor, dreamer or visionary? As children we see a world with no limits, and try anything. We'll eat food off the floor, stick our hands on a hot pan, and jump into a pool having no idea how to swim. Somewhere along the lines we learn fear.
Some kids learn fear early. Their parents are quick to stop any action which has any risk. Kids who are raised alone tend to have more protective parents. younger kids of larger families tend to get more leeway as parents realize, the kids will eventually figure out the hot stove hurts and they'll quit touching it.
As we become adults the same things happen to us. Our bosses tell us to toe the line. Banks say they'll take our homes if we don't make the payments. In extreme cases you might lose your job and not be able to eat. This is how people end up in survival mode.
Sadly I meet more and more people in survival mode every day. Some of it is likely my environment so my evidence is strictly anecdotal. There are all kinds of studies to measure where people are mentally like the index of "consumer confidence". I haven't seen a "visionary scale" where we measure how many people are in each of the three categories I mentioned.
A visionary is someone like Richard Branson, Bill Gates or even actors like John Travolta, Henry Winkler or Tom Cruise. No matter what happens they are always looking forward. They see more possibilities and are rewarded for it.
At the other end of the spectrum are the people in survival mode. Survivors are people who worry about getting work tomorrow, or feeding themselves or their family tonight. They aren't looking at next month or vacation next year. They are just struggling to survive.
For generations, prophets and success coaches alike have said that it all starts in your head. If you are worried about putting food on the table tonight, the best you will be able to do is put food on the table. If you are worried about changing the world, food will happen because it has to happen as you put your efforts into changing the world.
Once you hit survival mode, you enter a very difficult place that usually takes some major event to break you out of that mode of thinking. Sometimes bankruptcy can shake you loose, yet some people have gone bankrupt multiple times. As a business owner who has had successful businesses and not so successful businesses, I can tell you that explaining to your family that you are broke can be very motivating.
I can also tell you it can be very depressing. I have personally known people who took their own lives when they hit bottom. When you hit the bottom you only have two places to go, up or out. Out should never be an option, we should always have somewhere to turn. Sadly not everyone does.
In the middle are dreamers. They are doing ok, think big and maybe even talk big but never seem to move forward. They are always looking at what other people are doing, and trying to emulate their success, all the while staying put.
If you think you are a visionary, ask yourself this, How much better off are you this year then you were last year? True visionary are much better off. If you are about the same or only a little better off, you are closer to being a dreamer. If you answered that you are a little worse of, or definitely worse off, you have slipped into survival mode.
If you are truly in a visionary position now, you have already done this and know where you are going. If your are a dreamer, you might have done this but haven't really focused on it. If you are in survival mode, you haven't even thought about it.
What is "IT"?
"IT" is your vision. Your vision can't be complicated, and it must be clear. Last year I had a dozen goals or "things" on my vision board. One of my personal coaches said to reduce it to three because twelve things where simply too much to focus on every day. He said my vision board was too cluttered and therefore my mind was getting cluttered. He was right, I had stalled and fallen back to "dreamer" mode. It was the same advice I had been giving clients.
I learned as an instructor pilot in the military, it is always easier to see what other people can do to move forward and make great leaps of progress than it is to see what you are doing wrong or what you can do to get ahead. Using that philosophy, I hire coaches just like people hire me. The key is to listen to them.
When I trimmed my list down to three major objectives, I hit the first one in just a couple of months and took it off the list. Then I added another. I will probably only get six or seven of my original twelve goals completed, but the reality is that a couple of the goals probably weren't that important anyway, and I'll forget what they were when it is time to add them back to the list. More importantly, I probably wouldn't get more than two done had I not trimmed the list to focus on no more than three at a time.
Spend time asking yourself how you are doing right now compared to last week, last month and last year. If you are worried about putting food on the table tomorrow, make that your goal, and as soon as you have it figured out, don't relax and don't let up. Take time to create your three major goals for the year and spend 15 minutes each day thinking about them until you can say you are better off and have accomplished them. Then do it again with three new goals or objectives.
Always move forward even if the steps are very small and slow.
Put your mind to work while you sleep and get out of survival mode. It won't happen tonight, and it won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen. If you are in dreamer mode, pick one big dream, and give it everything you have. You'll get there. It might take a year, or it might take ten. In the words of Winston Churchill, "Never, never, never, never, never, never ever give up."
As I write this I am thirty pounds lighter than I was a year ago. One goal done....Next.
Some kids learn fear early. Their parents are quick to stop any action which has any risk. Kids who are raised alone tend to have more protective parents. younger kids of larger families tend to get more leeway as parents realize, the kids will eventually figure out the hot stove hurts and they'll quit touching it.
As we become adults the same things happen to us. Our bosses tell us to toe the line. Banks say they'll take our homes if we don't make the payments. In extreme cases you might lose your job and not be able to eat. This is how people end up in survival mode.
Sadly I meet more and more people in survival mode every day. Some of it is likely my environment so my evidence is strictly anecdotal. There are all kinds of studies to measure where people are mentally like the index of "consumer confidence". I haven't seen a "visionary scale" where we measure how many people are in each of the three categories I mentioned.
A visionary is someone like Richard Branson, Bill Gates or even actors like John Travolta, Henry Winkler or Tom Cruise. No matter what happens they are always looking forward. They see more possibilities and are rewarded for it.
At the other end of the spectrum are the people in survival mode. Survivors are people who worry about getting work tomorrow, or feeding themselves or their family tonight. They aren't looking at next month or vacation next year. They are just struggling to survive.
For generations, prophets and success coaches alike have said that it all starts in your head. If you are worried about putting food on the table tonight, the best you will be able to do is put food on the table. If you are worried about changing the world, food will happen because it has to happen as you put your efforts into changing the world.
Once you hit survival mode, you enter a very difficult place that usually takes some major event to break you out of that mode of thinking. Sometimes bankruptcy can shake you loose, yet some people have gone bankrupt multiple times. As a business owner who has had successful businesses and not so successful businesses, I can tell you that explaining to your family that you are broke can be very motivating.
I can also tell you it can be very depressing. I have personally known people who took their own lives when they hit bottom. When you hit the bottom you only have two places to go, up or out. Out should never be an option, we should always have somewhere to turn. Sadly not everyone does.
In the middle are dreamers. They are doing ok, think big and maybe even talk big but never seem to move forward. They are always looking at what other people are doing, and trying to emulate their success, all the while staying put.
If you think you are a visionary, ask yourself this, How much better off are you this year then you were last year? True visionary are much better off. If you are about the same or only a little better off, you are closer to being a dreamer. If you answered that you are a little worse of, or definitely worse off, you have slipped into survival mode.
If you are truly in a visionary position now, you have already done this and know where you are going. If your are a dreamer, you might have done this but haven't really focused on it. If you are in survival mode, you haven't even thought about it.
What is "IT"?
"IT" is your vision. Your vision can't be complicated, and it must be clear. Last year I had a dozen goals or "things" on my vision board. One of my personal coaches said to reduce it to three because twelve things where simply too much to focus on every day. He said my vision board was too cluttered and therefore my mind was getting cluttered. He was right, I had stalled and fallen back to "dreamer" mode. It was the same advice I had been giving clients.
I learned as an instructor pilot in the military, it is always easier to see what other people can do to move forward and make great leaps of progress than it is to see what you are doing wrong or what you can do to get ahead. Using that philosophy, I hire coaches just like people hire me. The key is to listen to them.
When I trimmed my list down to three major objectives, I hit the first one in just a couple of months and took it off the list. Then I added another. I will probably only get six or seven of my original twelve goals completed, but the reality is that a couple of the goals probably weren't that important anyway, and I'll forget what they were when it is time to add them back to the list. More importantly, I probably wouldn't get more than two done had I not trimmed the list to focus on no more than three at a time.
Spend time asking yourself how you are doing right now compared to last week, last month and last year. If you are worried about putting food on the table tomorrow, make that your goal, and as soon as you have it figured out, don't relax and don't let up. Take time to create your three major goals for the year and spend 15 minutes each day thinking about them until you can say you are better off and have accomplished them. Then do it again with three new goals or objectives.
Always move forward even if the steps are very small and slow.
Put your mind to work while you sleep and get out of survival mode. It won't happen tonight, and it won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen. If you are in dreamer mode, pick one big dream, and give it everything you have. You'll get there. It might take a year, or it might take ten. In the words of Winston Churchill, "Never, never, never, never, never, never ever give up."
As I write this I am thirty pounds lighter than I was a year ago. One goal done....Next.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Are You Setting Goals? Is It Working For You?
Goal Setting is something that every self help book and coach that I have read recommends. I am no different as a coach and a marketing trainer, and yet I see people fail to reach goals all the time. If goal setting works so well, how come so few people set goals, or keep up with them? And among those that do, how come so many report that they aren't achieving any of their goals?
Who are the people that seem to get everything done and accomplish all of their goals? What is the big secret?
While talking with several clients over that past month, one stood out. He had a different attitude and his business, or rather the business he manages accomplished something they had never done before. They put a car together and built a team to compete in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. I stopped by because they said I had to see what the car looked like after the event.
In the game of life, we are always looking to win, and in this case, the goal was not to win the 24 hour race, it was to merely finish. Finishing was the goal and what the team called a win. They did it. If you get a chance, go see the car at TruSpeed. If not click the picture so see the timeline on Facebook.
Next year, maybe set the goal to place, but for this year finishing was a cause for a big celebration.
So how did they do something that other teams couldn't do. Much more experienced teams didn't finish the race, and yet these guys did. They admit they finished with a little luck since the only thing holding the engine in the car as it crossed the finish line was one transmission bolt. The engine mounts were gone and what is normally a rock solid motor shook like a scared dog.
Tyler (the team GM) and I talked about the accomplishment. It took a year of planning broken down into little daily goals that led to the race. One foot in front of the other each day until race day. Like all of us, Tyler had some challenges keeping the entire team moving forward. To begin with racing a 24 hour race is not a cheap endeavor, you have to raise money, find sponsors, build a car, find drivers and get all of that stuff from the west coast where they work to the east coast for the race.
Just like any goal that gets accomplished, Tyler broke it down into bite sized pieces, so at the end of each day, they could say they did something. At the end of each week they did something bigger. At the end of the month they did something even bigger. At the end of the year, they watched their car cross the finish line at Daytona, never mind the condition.
You can achieve any goal big or small by doing the same thing and keeping one foot moving in front of the other. If you want to set a big goal, set it, but then break it down into realistic daily and weekly goals. Instead of making a daily goal to "get a major sponsor", break it down. Expect that it will take 300 calls to get a major sponsor. Knowing you need that commitment 2 months before the race, your goal is 30 calls a month for 10 months.
If you make a daily goal to make just 3 calls each day, you will hit 300 well in advance of the 2 month deadline. Better yet, when you get that sponsor well ahead of the deadline you get the satisfaction of lining through the goal as done. You also have a reason for a small celebration. Never forget to celebrate success even if it is just a milkshake or smoothie.
Goals work, the trick is to make them realistic, and to make sure the goals you set are truly important to you. Setting goals you don't really want to accomplish is just an exercise in frustration, and a mental note to self that you don't reach your goals. Setting goals that aren't realistic like "learn to fly by flapping my arms" isn't any better. Either way you tell yourself that you can't do it and you are a failure. Successful people set goals they can achieve, and the more blood, sweat and tears required, the bigger the satisfaction and celebration.
If you set goals that are very big then you have to break them down into smaller achievable tasks. Do that for a year, and my bet is you have your best year ever.
While talking with several clients over that past month, one stood out. He had a different attitude and his business, or rather the business he manages accomplished something they had never done before. They put a car together and built a team to compete in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. I stopped by because they said I had to see what the car looked like after the event.
In the game of life, we are always looking to win, and in this case, the goal was not to win the 24 hour race, it was to merely finish. Finishing was the goal and what the team called a win. They did it. If you get a chance, go see the car at TruSpeed. If not click the picture so see the timeline on Facebook.
Next year, maybe set the goal to place, but for this year finishing was a cause for a big celebration.
So how did they do something that other teams couldn't do. Much more experienced teams didn't finish the race, and yet these guys did. They admit they finished with a little luck since the only thing holding the engine in the car as it crossed the finish line was one transmission bolt. The engine mounts were gone and what is normally a rock solid motor shook like a scared dog.
Tyler (the team GM) and I talked about the accomplishment. It took a year of planning broken down into little daily goals that led to the race. One foot in front of the other each day until race day. Like all of us, Tyler had some challenges keeping the entire team moving forward. To begin with racing a 24 hour race is not a cheap endeavor, you have to raise money, find sponsors, build a car, find drivers and get all of that stuff from the west coast where they work to the east coast for the race.
Just like any goal that gets accomplished, Tyler broke it down into bite sized pieces, so at the end of each day, they could say they did something. At the end of each week they did something bigger. At the end of the month they did something even bigger. At the end of the year, they watched their car cross the finish line at Daytona, never mind the condition.
You can achieve any goal big or small by doing the same thing and keeping one foot moving in front of the other. If you want to set a big goal, set it, but then break it down into realistic daily and weekly goals. Instead of making a daily goal to "get a major sponsor", break it down. Expect that it will take 300 calls to get a major sponsor. Knowing you need that commitment 2 months before the race, your goal is 30 calls a month for 10 months.
If you make a daily goal to make just 3 calls each day, you will hit 300 well in advance of the 2 month deadline. Better yet, when you get that sponsor well ahead of the deadline you get the satisfaction of lining through the goal as done. You also have a reason for a small celebration. Never forget to celebrate success even if it is just a milkshake or smoothie.
Goals work, the trick is to make them realistic, and to make sure the goals you set are truly important to you. Setting goals you don't really want to accomplish is just an exercise in frustration, and a mental note to self that you don't reach your goals. Setting goals that aren't realistic like "learn to fly by flapping my arms" isn't any better. Either way you tell yourself that you can't do it and you are a failure. Successful people set goals they can achieve, and the more blood, sweat and tears required, the bigger the satisfaction and celebration.
If you set goals that are very big then you have to break them down into smaller achievable tasks. Do that for a year, and my bet is you have your best year ever.
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