Risky Business: The Power of WHY

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Why Powers Risk

WHY power makes us do things that others question. It has been almost three years now since I took this very risky venture on several fronts. I chose to work for myself instead of for someone else. I chose to change my primary business from technical training and development to cultivating leadership and personal growth. I chose to invest in being a Founding Partner in the John Maxwell Team and a certified leadership speaker/trainer/coach. I chose to pour my resources into developing that business. For a variety of reasons, it is still not a booming success but I know it is coming and continue to work towards that.

Why Powers Purpose?

The big question I usually get is WHY I chose to make the change to leadership development and fostering personal growth as opposed to sticking where I was with training and development consulting (I still do that by the way). I can only say that it is the answer to that very same WHY that drives me. Over the years I have worked for several companies, large and small, and through that with many client companies. A consistent issue I saw in many organizations is that there was plenty of management going on and very little leadership. And there is a difference, which I have talked about in an Ah-Ha! Moment of the Week video.

And what I saw from this was that most of the problems of the organization was due to that lack of leadership. I truly believe that

Everything Rises and Falls on Leadership

and that the level of effectiveness of leadership is what determines how a company succeeds and grows or withers and dies. Small businesses today especially need to embrace this because in this hard economy it becomes real easy to lose vision what you are trying to accomplish and how you are going to get there. You get lost in the trees of survival that you can no longer see the forest. Then, when things do clear you are totally unprepared to take advantage of the growth opportunities before you. I believe in small business and I believe in YOU and that’s the WHY that drives me every day! It’s why I became the TOP-LINE GUY to help you achieve BOTTOM-LINE RESULTS!

Action Plan

What’s your WHY? Is it specific? Just making money is not enough; just serving people is not enough. You need a WHY that will drive you through hard times. A WHY that will compel you to take risks, financial and otherwise. A WHY that will set the stage for you to swallow pride and independence enough to seek help to excel. A WHY that will drive you to learn what you need to learn and gather who you need to gather. A WHY that demands a legacy to go far beyond where you will ever take it.
Write that WHY down. Remind yourself of it every day. Let it infiltrate your organization in the vision, in the mission statement, in the customer service, in employee relations; in everything you do.
Not sure how to make all that happen? Not sure of your WHY? Seek a coach or partner who can help you identify it, define it, and live it. There’s a reason that highly successful organizations have coaches; because that’s how they became highly successful organizations.

Turn the Airplane Around – A Change to Your Path

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Change of Mindset

Driving to a meeting this morning I was listening, as I usually do, to “Automobile University”. If you haven’t done this, it’s a practice I highly recommend. Instead of listening to local radio and hearing the same song five times in an hour or tuning in (bleah!) talk radio or the news, try instead taking advantage of that really nice CD player you have and pop in motivational stories or information. I will alternately listen to audio with John Maxwell, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Les Brown, and the CD that comes in every issue of Success Magazine. This is especially great for those who don’t have the time to read constantly (that pretty much covers all of us). Positive, inspirational, motivational, and informative. Great way to start off!

Flight Path Change

Anyway, I was listening to Zig Ziglar tell an old familiar story, which I’ll retell from my perspective.

I boarded a plane at Orlando International Airport that was bound for Seattle, Washington with no stops. The plane took off and after being in the air for about a half hour, it was no longer heading directly for Seattle. The earth rotates, winds blow, all kinds of physical forces work against the plane heading straight for Seattle. Don’t know where we are going, but it ain’t Seattle.

So the pilot, wise man that he is, turns the plane around and heads back to Orlando, lands and starts all over again.

What?!

Of course he doesn’t! He and the co-pilot simply make navigational adjustments to re-direct the plane back towards Seattle in mid-flight. It would be silly and waste of time to head back and start all over again.

That’s the story of you and me. When we attempt to get somewhere in life and accomplish something a monkey wrench gets thrown into the works. It is inevitable that things will not go according to plan. Too many times, the way that a person will try to solve that problem is by tossing the whole plan out the window and making a new; starting all over again. It tends to be either/or; a change in the plan doesn’t enter our mind.

Change Your Plan

Stop! Think!

It’s not necessarily the whole plan, just parts of it. Sometimes even it’s not the plan at all, just outside forces that interfere and cause a problem. Instead of throwing out the whole plan, just make adjustments. Don’t change where you want to go, simply change the path you will follow to get there. Keep yourself directed, don’t lose sight of where you want to be! The rocky path in front of us can distract us, but you need tunnel vision so you don’t accept anything other than the goal you wish to accomplish.

Action Plan

Take a look at your goals and think about one that recently had a setback. Did you toss out the plan? Have you made a new one or abandoned the goal altogether?
Re-focus. Do you still want that goal? What can you do differently to get there? Is there something you can try that no one has tried before? This is especially good when conventional methods aren’t working.
Take the first step NOW! When we take an immediate action, no matter how small, we increase the likelihood of success.

Improving Leadership through the Brain-to-Belly Nerve

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Now this is an interesting perspective I ran across. If I am reading it right, it seems to suggest that there are physical conditions that affect our ability to show courage and other characteristics necessary to be an excellent leader. What do you think? New age mumbo jumbo? Medically-validated?

Is courage teachable or learnable, or is it ingrained in you at an early age? At what point does it become to late to develop?

What do you do when you want to bolster your courage? What other characteristics do you think you could build or reinforce through focus techniques like what is mentioned here?

Improving Leadership through the Brain-to-Belly Nerve (via Investorideas.com News )

Improving Leadership through the Brain-to-Belly Nerve Business Execs Should Embrace Mind-Body-Business Connection, Says Veteran Consultant; Offers TipsIdeas get bigger when you share them… ÃÂ ÃÂ ÃÂ September 18, 2013 (www.investorideas.com newswire…

Continue reading “Improving Leadership through the Brain-to-Belly Nerve” →

Focus to Create Hot Moments

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Magnified Focus

When I was a child, we used to take our magnifying glass outside and in the hot Florida sun we would hold it up and see the light shining through it on the ground below. If we then moved it about we could focus that light into a single beam that would then start to burn a blade of grass or an ant. The focus was the difference.

Note to parents: if you are concerned that a kid who might read this has been suddenly given a way to perpetrate mischief, I got news for you; they already know this and if they don’t will soon discover it on their own. I did.

Refracted light illuminates. It can brighten and reveal. It can even offer a low-level of heat. This is both beneficial and productive. Try reading or performing open heart surgery in the dark. Try finding anything small that you dropped on the ground. You likely won’t find it until you are able to provide ambient light to reveal its location. Refracted light reveals but doesn’t empower.

Focused light provides power and heat and intensity. Sunlight gathered by panels gets focus and turns into electrical power. A laser in very simple terms is focused light. Apply enough focus to the light and it provides intense and powerful energy. The focus is the difference.

Your Laser Focus and the HOT MOMENT

When your energies get refracted, poured out all over the place, you may get illumination but you won’t get power. It is not until you focus your energies on a particular point that you are able to unlock the intensity and power; that you are able to generate a HOT MOMENT. The focus is the difference.

When we can create a HOT MOMENT, we build intensity and energy and power. It drives us forward and isn’t easily stopped or even slowed down by anything that gets in the way. We need momentum to keep us on track and on focus. Once we lose focus, we lose momentum and the HOT MOMENT is gone.

To create a HOT MOMENT, identify your target. Without a target, there is no focus. A target must be very specific. Identify what success is for that target. Is it a deadline reached, value-added to a person or group, a product sold, a goal reached? Once you have the target, funnel all your energy on it. It doesn’t have to be for long periods of time; a laser accomplishes a lot even in just short bursts. The focus is the difference. Act immediately, don’t wait to “feel like it” or for the “right moment”. The right moment comes when you create it; you will feel like it after you start doing it. Act now and put all your energy into it and ride the HOT MOMENT for as long as you can. Reward yourself for accomplishment.

Action Plan

What one thing requires your focus this week?
What does success mean for that thing? How will you reward yourself for achieving it?
Personally brainstorm for 10 minutes on ways you can dedicate more energy on that thing.
What is the HOT MOMENT you can create through this?

Connecting – Networking’s Common Flaw

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Networking – Not Connecting

It is inevitable, whether you like to be in groups or not, that for a small business to succeed you or someone representing you are involved with some networking groups. These groups are typically formed with the primary purpose of introducing people and collecting contacts and therefore, in theory, generating leads. There are lots of these groups around pretty much anywhere you are; literally hundreds of them. BNI groups abound, groups like WOAMTEC that cater to a specific gender or genre, community service clubs like Rotary and Kiwanis have networking aspects to them, chambers of commerce sponsor groups, trade associations create them, and sometimes just someone with a mind for a target audience will create them.

I have belonged to several over time and visited many others. They all have the their advantages and disadvantages and most are at least a little productive eventually. The biggest issue I have with most of them is that the participants really don’t know what they are doing and it becomes more of a mingling than a networking. The fatal flaw is that you aren’t connecting, you are simply meeting and greeting. Some of the common mistakes I see are:

People who show up and pass out their business cards like they are dealing poker. Sometimes they include some type of greeting but usually it is just their brief pitch. The assumption that I am going to do business with you or refer you to anyone else just because I have your business card is a fatal flaw. That’s supporting your printer, not connecting.

Keep the card in your pocket, I don’t want it.

Shooting for quantity of contacts over quality. I have seen people come in, make a point of talking to every single person in the room briefly, collect cards, and rush out confident that they have done their job. Like the example of passing out the cards above, you have done nothing to further your cause other than collect some additional names you will probably add to your list to spam until they get sick of it. Again, not connecting.
The assumption that you are going to do business with anyone in the room. Yes, on a VERY RARE occasion that may happen, but it’s not the purpose of your being there. Think about it: did you go to the meeting to buy from anyone there? What makes you think they did? The purpose of networking is not to do business. We’ll talk about that purpose (connecting) further down in the post.
Relying on your “elevator speech” as the entire moment of contact with anyone in the room. I am not a big fan of elevator speeches for this very reason. In case you don’t know what an elevator speech is, it works off the theory that if you were in an elevator with someone you really wanted to contact you basically have 30 seconds to impress so you need to present a clear, concise summary of who you are and what you do. It works off the assumption that if someone in the elevator or at a networking group asks you what you do they really want to know. Chances are they don’t; they really want to tell you what they do.

Connecting – Not Networking

I have spent time going around to networking groups and pointing out these fatal flaws and proposing that they do something different. If you tire of this merry-go-round that gets nowhere, why not try connecting instead of networking. Connecting is all about building REAL relationships with people, not just acquaintances or business card collections. You make friends, not contacts. And that’s what networking is really all about. You don’t have to go anywhere new, you can still attend the same events, but your intentions, purpose, and approach are different. The only thing that will change is you.

The idea is that you want to spend more time being interested than interesting. At the heart of it, people want to know that you find them fascinating. They don’t want to know that you have a new, revolutionary product or service; they want to know that you can help them, that you care about them, and that they can trust you. Take this approach and in just a short time I believe it will amaze you at how things change for the better. Better authentic relationships with people, leading to better referrals and increase in closings. Just changing this mindset makes a world of difference. As Dale Carnegie said,

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

Here are some tips to get started:

Be one of the first to arrive and the last to leave to maximize your contact time. Budget your time so that you aren’t rushed. Being hurried shows up in your attitude, your speech, and your body language. No one thinks you care for them when you are in a hurry and you aren’t really connecting if you are in a hurry.
Set your goal before you walk in the door to focus on 2-3 quality contacts. If you meet more, and your certainly will, then great. But focus on actually initiating a relationship with 2-3 people where you are really connecting with them.
Ditch the elevator speech. Marketing Guru Seth Godin says no one buys anything in a elevator. Give short, concise answers to inquiries about you and quickly turn it around to ask questions about them. You want them to talk the majority of the time you spend with them. People who let other people talk about themselves are regarded by them as the best conversationalist in the world.
When you do talk, share more personal information than business information. Real connecting with people happens on common ground and that is always personal. You may find you went to the same school, at both natives to the area, have kids, etc.

Commonality makes connections.

Here’s the biggie: instead of looking for what you are going to get from each relationship, look for what you can give. What can you do for them, especially if unrelated to your business. Can you connect them with someone who can solve a problem you don’t address? Perhaps they need a good medical specialist or are looking for a new church or a good place that serves authentic viking food. How can you add value to them. Ironically, when you do that you will eventually receive value in return. It is really true, what goes around comes around.

Action Plan

Think about your next meeting. Pick two or three people you will focus on building a relationship with this week.
In your conversation with them, find one thing you can do for them THIS WEEK and then DO IT.