Ever wanted an entourage?

You know what I mean.  You see it on TV every so often and even in real life from time to time.  You see the celebrity walking through the airport surrounded by assistants doing everything from confirming their travel schedule to fetching them a latte (I said 3 shots of espresso!!).  For most of us, this is just a fantasy.  Or is it...

The truth is that I have an entourage.  OK... maybe you won't see them surrounding me at the airport fetching me coffee, but it's an entourage all the same.  Better yet, it's not a fluffy, egotistical entourage... it's a practical group of experts that are on call just waiting to provide me with the best advice available.

When a friend of mine couldn't get health insurance at work and wanted options, I called one of my experts and he found her an affordable plan.  When one of my organizations faced a legal question, I made a quick call and received expert advice that put the issue to rest.  When the stock market started it's roller coaster ride last week, I didn't worry because my team of experts carefully watched the market. 

My team is amazing.  They managing my branding.  They keep up on tax codes.  They watch my income and expenses.  They go to conferences looking learning about more ways to protect my business.  They research products looking for new forms of insurance to protect my family. 

Does this sound good to you?  Would you like to have your own entourage? 

Come check our Strategy Mastermind Group on August 19th to learn how you can have your entourage (or to learn that you already have one and aren't using them!).  While I prepare for Friday, my entourage is scanning credit agencies making sure that my identity is safe and reading articles on the best investment opportunities.

Bring a friend!  They'll be impressed!

In today's Strategy Mastermind, Executive Coach Randy Mayes outlined how much we truly make decisions with our emotions and then use logic to justify the decisions.  When we ignore this, we get into trouble.  As Randy said, we lose our relationship with ourselves which impacts our ability to have good relationships with others.

Is this important for your business?  You bet!

We all have "baggage".  This baggage is where our emotions don't align with our logic.  I shared the story of a few years ago when I first started working with Randy.  I wanted to get more business for my company.  Intellectually, I knew how to do this, but the business wasn't growing as fast as I knew it could.  I engaged Randy Mayes as a coach and he helped me understand and overcome the real issue.

In our discussion, we discovered that I already had all of the tools in place to get new clients.  In fact, I had several potential new clients ready to go that I simply hadn't closed.  The key to change is to understanding the emotion behind the change and aligning it with the logic.  Why wasn't I closing these potential clients?  The truth was that it felt good to have potential business.  I liked seeing the potential growth in my business.  I was afraid of NOT having potential clients out there, a feeling that I experienced when I first started and REALLY didn't like or want to experience again.

With this clarity, came a course of action.  I closed these clients (and more) and tripled my business in a short period of time.  In my experience, most (if not all) business owners have these kinds of barriers in their business that is holding them back in some way.  Developing a relationship with a coach, mentor, or a small and trusted team of accountability partners, is a powerful way for overcoming those obstacles!
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It was really a pretty amazing set of experiences that surprised me each time at how natural it was...  and it did nothing less than triple my business.  What am I talking about?  Coaching.

Here is how it works.  The coach asks you questions.  You answer them.  Then the coach tells you what you just said.  The next time you meet, you start talking about where you are and the coach reminds you what you said before.  Then the coach asks you questions.  You answer them.  The coach tells you what you just said and compares it to what you said before.

At no time in my early meetings with Randy Mayes, executive business coach, did Randy tell me what to do in my business.  Instead, he asked me to direct myself and express it in a clear and concise way to another person (him).  When you have to say something out loud, what was seemingly clear in your head gets exposed as being fuzzy.  Randy would listen and patiently ask me questions like, "if you want to make $100,000 a year, how many clients will you need at $50 a piece?" (this is a fictional question... just making the point).  When I suddenly have to confront the reality that I would need 2000 clients a year and how unrealistic that sounds, the fog begins to lift and I suddenly know what I need to do next. 

It is seldom discussed in business circles, but having a coach or a mentor is incredibly valuable.  At our next Strategy Mastermind Group, I have invited Randy Mayes to talk about the value of coaching for business owners.  I think you'll enjoy his story as a business owner turned coach and catch on to a little of his passion in helping individuals find their true purpose and success!

I often tell our members that I don't like to talk theory just to be theoretical... I truly believe that the concepts we cover in the Strategy Mastermind Group can drive DRASTICALLY positive results for you and your company. 

This month, Strategy Mastermind member Brett Curry outlined the results he managed to derive from the previous month's discussion on Vision and Mission in a 15 minute presentation to the group.  The journey that Brett and his partner, Chris Brewer, took over the past 4 weeks lead them what Brett called a valuable "clarity" about his company and the services he offers.  In fact, it has lead him and his partner to unveil a name change for his company from Local Marketing Giant to Online Marketing Giant. 

Special thanks to Brett for sharing his story with the group!  If you have a success story from something you learned in the group and would like to share, just let me know! 

There are liars, dirty rotten liars, and then their are statisticians...  This famous quote is actually pretty insightful.  As a friend of mine at 3M once said, "show me how you will measure me and I will show you how I measure up".  Again, this is very insightful.

Let me introduce to you the "Data Uncertainty Principle".  This principle (named by yours truly) is basic, yet powerful.  "Data collected to be used for a predetermined purpose is unreliable".  Simple...  but what are the implications?

If a corporation decides to measure it's sales performance and use those sales figures to give awards to it's employees, the actual sales figures will become unreliable.  Employees will do what they can to inflate the figures... and they will become very creative in how they do it.  They will force sales to be processed earlier in quarters where they can hit a bonus and delay sales that occur in slow quarters to give themselves a better shot at hitting the next bonus.  This is a powerful and universal concept.

It's hard to believe this is true and I won't try to prove it to you in this article.  I'll only leave you to think about it for awhile...

You asked for it, so I did it.  I took my long list of potential topics for our team and landed on the next 3 month's worth of material.  I then put it on the website under the new heading of "Topics".  You'll also notice that I added a disclaimer saying that I reserve the right to change my mind, although I'll try not to.  In fact, I am pretty excited by the topics coming up.  Upcoming sessions will include...

- What is a Mission Statement and do I REALLY need to have one?
- What does Vision do for my company?
- How can metrics help and really, really, really hurt my company?
- How Baby Boomers make great pets and why Millennials feel like they are ready to take over... now.

A powerful example of how we can be paralyzed by distraction was presented at Friday's Strategy Mastermind Group.

One of our members, who I happen to know is extremely intelligent and not easily flustered, couldn't hardly answer a group of simple questions.  She struggled with remembering her mother's birthday.  She incorrectly identified Green Day and Blink 182 as two of her favorite bands (they are not we later found out).  What happened that made a normally sharp individual have so much trouble?

I asked her questions in a strange order.  I gave her part of a math problem followed by the date question, followed by a question about her 3rd favorite band, followed by a random statement about Donald Trump's crazy hair.  The inputs weren't complex, but they were disorganized.  It was noise.  It was chaos.

We don't work well in chaos.  This exercise wasn't intended to pick on Megan (although that was a side benefit), it was designed to fluster anyone.  It was also designed to show what can happen to any of us in a typical day where the phone rings, emails arrive, news streams via the web, and people come to visit. 

Fortunately, we began to discuss a solution.  We talked about forming a system to help convert this noise into ordered and prioritized information.  We talked about some important tools like Gmail and Highrise (www.highrisehq.com) that can help you leverage the power of technology to bring order to your life. 

So... how is your system coming along?  Did you read this post at the right time, or was this just another distraction...  We are ALL works in progress!!!

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People who avoid conflict are often the ones that find themselves surrounded by it.  

When a team of people decide to avoid critical conversations (high emotions, disagreement, high stakes), the battles are fought in other, much less productive ways.  Unclean dishes in the break room become a battle front for disenfranchised employees.  The water cooler becomes a boardroom without any power to actually create action.  Negativity spreads like a disease across the organization...  all for the sake of "harmony" and "team".

Great teams and great relationships are never conflict free.  In fact, great relationships have conflict, but they hit it head on and keep a common purpose in mind (a "shared pool of meaning").   My wife likes to put the glasses away with the tops up.  I like to put them away with the tops down.  For 10 years of marriage, we flipped glasses in the cupboard and sometimes even fought over who would empty the dishwasher.  Then one day I thought about our "shared pool of meaning" and realized that these glasses had no place in our common purpose (to love each other, to love our children, to support each other).  So, now I put the glasses away the way she likes it... not because it is the right way to do it, but because we have a bigger purpose.

When you have a conflict with someone that is difficult to resolve, it is important to start with the simple statement "what do I really want out of this".  You need to think of these things while you are cool and collected so that when emotions start to flow, you can stay focused on what you really want. 

Once you know what you really need (realistically), you need to have the conversation.  You can skip this step only if you are walking away from the relationship, which is a bad idea if you are working with the person.  This is the step that many people skip because they are afraid their emotions will get the best of them.  Your emotions are OK, but make sure that your brain is focused on what you really want to happen. 

Once you have initiated the conversation, remember that this person is not a bad person (I have met very few really "bad" people).  They have their own experiences and their own perceptions that you simply may not understand.  That is all OK... you aren't out to change that.  What is it that both of you want to accomplish in your relationship?  Find focus in that during the discussion and you are on your way to a positive outcome.

Summary...
1) Conflict itself is not bad.  Unresolved, unfocused conflict is poison.
2) Avoiding Conflict leads to more conflict... so don't avoid it.
3) Stay focused so your emotions don't lead you down the wrong path.
4) Find the common greater purpose (the shared pool of meaning).
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I was talking to a personal trainer friend a few weeks ago, and we were talking about the YMCA.  He made an interesting comment...  he doesn't like to go to the Y during January because it is super busy, but he knows it will start to clear out by February.  The New Year seems to inspire people to make New Years Resolutions that often include "getting into shape".  Then, predictably, people start to go back to their old routines, which does not include working out.  

This simple example, shows where "theory" and "reality" diverge.  We "know" we should work out a few times a week to stay healthy.  We have plenty of motivation to be healthy as we live within our own health every minute of every day.  We know we should keep better financial records of our business.  We know we should execute that great marketing plan we talked about last year.  We "know" a lot of things, but we end up "doing" less than what we know.  Imagine what you could do if you just did what you already know.  Imagine what you clients or customers could do...   Imagine what your employees could do...

This week, on February 18th (Friday), at 7:30AM at 425 Downtown, our Strategy Mastermind Group will be exploring the reasons that we get "stuck" in theory land or in the land of routine... and we will chart a way out.  You won't want to miss it!

If you know someone in business who struggles with the "doing" part, give them a great gift and invite them as your guest.  Simply have them register at http://www.strategymastermind.com in the lower right hand corner. 
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This is worthy of 10:48 of your time.  This is a very entertaining video narrated by Daniel Pink, author of "Drive".  "Drive" outlines how science is blowing the roof off of what business thinks about motivation.  Special thanks to Matthew P. Block, Strategy Mastermind Group member who found this video and brought it to my attention.
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