05
Nov
2020
Your future in focus! Intentional Goal Setting Series (2/3)

Your future in focus! Intentional Goal Setting Series (2/3)

Welcome back! If you missed us last week, we were being “unrealistic” about our goals. If you missed that one, go check it out now and get an idea of how your future self will live and how your higher self will be. Once you’ve set your moonshot goals, how will you get there? Today I’ll share with you a simple two part process to bring your biggest dreams into focus and to make their achievement inevitable.

Step 1 – Make your goals SMART!

The simple test to determine how likely you are to achieve your goals is to ask “how will I know when I’ve achieved it?” If the finish line can’t be seen or isn’t clear, how will we know what must be done to cross it? Make sure your goals can check each one of these requirements:

Specific – What specifically are you looking to accomplish. Simply saying you want to, say, “get stronger” violates a few of these rules; the first being it does not state specifically the strength you are looking to achieve. Is it physical? mental? just your legs?

Measurable – At what time can you check the box signifying your accomplishment of your goal? Being “financially independent” is a common goal I hear and it fails the test. With an extremely modest lifestyle and a country with a low cost of living, someone could technically be financially independent on $100,000, if invested properly. Conversely, if you plan to be financially independent, living a lavish life in Southern California, that number will likely have extra zeros.

Attainable – I know, I know! I told you to be unrealistic. I should have known you’d put time travel as your financial goal, so you could go back and bet on sporting events, like in Back to the Future 2. Your goal needs to be within the realm of human capability, which still gives you a lot of latitude, because we are amazing machines!

Relevant – It must support the life you want to live. Fortunately, since we are starting with our highest level of goals, your goals are all relevant to the life you want to live, unless you picked a goal to support someone else’s priorities. Relevancy will come into play in the next step as we go small with our goals. If your goal in your finances is to pay off your debt and your smaller goal includes investing, while this is a great thing to do, it is not directly relevant to your debt elimination goal.

Time Bound – Every time we set a goal, from here on out, we must have clarity on when we will achieve them. If we incorporate the other four elements, we could end up with a goal like: “to save $1 Million in my 401k for retirement.” It is specific, measurable, attainable, and relevant, however it doesn’t state if this is a goals I want to achieve in the next ten years or the next fifty!

Step 2 – Goal setting to the Now!

Remember those big scary Someday Goals you set? Remember how insurmountable and out of reach they may have felt? Now we’ve made them SMART, so they are a little clearer and more in focus, yet they are still big!

Goal setting to the now is where we systematically reverse engineer your goal to build a staircase to lead you to the moon where your goal’s achievement lies! The process is simple and empowering! Using it will help you realize that you can accomplish your biggest goals and dreams.

You start with your Someday goal and set a 5 year milestone using the clarifying question:

“What must I accomplish in the next 5 years to achieve my someday goal?”

If your highest level goal is less than 5 years away, it may be that you did not dream as large as you could have. Nevertheless, we’ll find your next goal container, ahead. Stop at this 5 year mark and write your SMART goal in the first-person present tense and anchor them in relevance. For example:

“It is 12/31/2025 and I have generated $500k of passive income for the 2026 calendar year so I can spend five days each week with my family and on my hobbies and only work on things which excite me.”

Ensure the milestone will support the future goal, which it will, so long as it really is SMART! Then we’ll repeat the process for the next year by asking:

“What must I accomplish in the next 1 year to achieve my 5 year goal?”

Now you will have your 1 year milestone to measure your progress toward your five year goal. It will look something like this:

“It is 12/31/2021 and I have generated $100k of passive income for the 2022 calendar year so I can spend my weekends and every evening with my family and on my hobbies.”

Take Action!

1. Goal set to the now. Take all of your Someday Goals down to 5 and 1 Year Goals.
2. Rewrite your goals so that they are SMART and write them in the first person present format.
3. Anchor your goals with relevance and highlight what accomplishing your goals will do for you.

Congratulations! You now have a one year action plan which will lead you ever closer to living the life of your dreams. If you enjoyed this process, check back next week as we build out a schedule for success for you to live your entire upcoming year by. Win your day, win your life!

Prior post:

<— (1/3) You need to be “unrealistic”

Next post:

(3/3) What you focus on expands! —>

Posted by Adam Lendi in Coaching, Goal Setting, Habits, Leadership, Life, Tools, 2 comments
29
Oct
2020
You need to be “unrealistic!” Intentional Goal Setting Series (1/3)

You need to be “unrealistic!” Intentional Goal Setting Series (1/3)

Happy New Year! Everyone in business will be ringing in 2021 this coming weekend. You hadn’t heard? Our pay days are the lagging indicator of the work we’ve put in now and the work we put in today will likely build toward income in January. For some, sales cycles may be shorter than two months, yet it is never too early to start setting yourself up for success!

I’ve met people who dread setting goals. Oftentimes, it is because they have trouble achieving the goals they’ve set for themselves or because they are being forced to do so. Goal setting is one of my favorite things to do and I’m exciting to share with you, over the next three weeks a proven process for taking your biggest dreams and making them your reality.

If I showed you the picture of a finished house and asked you to build it, how likely is it you would even know where to begin? Better, how about if I gave you a lot, wood, cement, tools, and even a crew. Without a clear set of instructions, how would you know what to build? Even if you were a carpenter or a general contractor, you wouldn’t know the dimensions, let alone the materials finishes.

How about if you got to watch a time lapse video of the house being built… in reverse… so you could watch the house being disassembled, piece by piece. You could slow down the replay and see how things are built. You could write down all of the components needed to ensure the roof stays up and that the foundation is stable.

We do the same thing with our goals. The two most common mistakes I’ve seen with goals are:

  • People set big goals and never build a plan to achieve them. They are discouraged by attempts to build their house from the finished picture and throw in their towel.
  • People set small goals, labeling them “realistic” and hit them. This may be even worse than the first, as we train ourselves to see mediocrity as success.

Today, we’ll paint that picture of our finished house. Just like your life, that finished house is made up of several components and systems which are all vital to its operation as a complete house. What are the parts of your life which complete you as a whole person? From their book, The One Thing, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan describe a life which can be grouped into seven areas.

  • Personal Life
  • Physical Health
  • Spiritual Life
  • Key Relationships
  • Finances
  • Job
  • Business

Take action!

1. In your journal or a notebook you can build on for the next few weeks, write a long term goal for each of the seven areas of your life.

2. Each goal should be your ultimate picture of success. Dare to dream big! If your goal can be accomplished in the next five years, you aren’t dreaming big enough!

3. Once you’ve written your Someday Goals, write them in a first-person narrative, using inclusive statements and non-conditional language. Example:

“When I am living my level 10 life, I will have every weekend and evening with my family. We will take one long vacation every quarter and will travel internationally twice per year.”

Bring your completed someday goals with you next week as we take the first steps toward an action plan to complete them. You may have seen me write about dominos in the past and how a domino can knock down another which is 50% larger. These are your earth to the moon dominos. We are going to chunk down to your two inch dominos which you can knock down with a simple flick of your finger, starting the chain reaction to your dreams!

Next step:

—> (2/3) You Future In Focus!

Posted by Adam Lendi in Business Planning, Goal Setting, Habits, Life, 5 comments
22
Oct
2020
Leave when you want, with your dignity, and your wealth!

Leave when you want, with your dignity, and your wealth!

Will your business be ready to sell when you are?

There is no doubt that 2020 has effected great change on the way we live our lives, what we do for fun, and where we choose to live. The stay-at-home orders of the Spring pushed many businesses to work remote and re-tool to provide more virtual services. While this came with its share of growing pains and Zoom-bombers, there has been some good that has come from this.

The new business landscape

Many businesses have announced that they will never return to full in-person workplaces, reducing their office costs, and creating happier employees. This is beginning to cause a shift in the way we view cities. With remote work spaces and the ability to attend face-to-face meetings from across the globe, many do not see the need to be close to the city center. Once upon a time you could not “make it” if you lived in a rural area. Today, it is becoming a viable reality.

With a growing workforce of remote employees, many armed with mobile hot-spots and their laptops took to the road in Recreational Vehicle’s (RVs) and have been enjoying a new office everywhere they park. In May and June, RV rentals were up over 1000%, compared to 2019 and sales in June were up 10%. My partner and I decided to seize the market of the moment and as RV campers with our own families, we decided to buy an RV park.

Doing what you love does not guarantee a fairy tale ending!

For those not familiar, an RV park is a campground with amenities for RV campers to park, connect to utilities, meet friends, and have a home base while they explore new areas. When you buy an RV park, very little of what you actually buy is tangible. The largest expense is the business itself. The real estate, buildings, and anything else, from utilities to golf carts and trucks, is a small portion of the purchase. Even though the sale of the business takes place in a real estate transaction, the most valuable asset can be transferred by email.

Imagine the freedom to retire inspired, work remote, and sell your business when you want. Your coach will help you achieve this!

As we began our search, we identified an RV park, right here in Colorado, in a popular mountain town, which appeared to suit our needs. We loved the location and saw a lot of potential to modernize this park and to bring it up to speed. Just as you wouldn’t buy a car without knowing what’s under the hood, you wouldn’t buy a business without knowing what you are getting into. In the business, we call this due diligence. We were certainly glad we did ours as this little fixer upper had some devastating yet avoidable defects hidden behind its curtain.

The couple who owned this park were older and like many getting into this business did it to make friends, spend time outside, and own their own business. They had achieved these goals and had finally made the decision, in their 80’s to move from operator to guest. The gentleman reminded me of my grandfather, very smart, resourceful, and reserved. The woman was sweet, cheerful, and personable. She was an outstanding face for their business. Let’s call them Bob and Sue.

The proof is always in the pudding… or the P&L

Running a mostly cash business and doing most of the repairs and maintenance themselves, Bob and Sue were able to report very little income and still maintain a profit. No doubt this system saved them on their taxes, year over year, despite it being a risky play. Bob and Sue had regular friends who would come visit them for the entire summer to take advantage of the deeply discounted site rentals at the monthly rate and with the added cash discount.

While this helped Bob and Sue maintain long term friendships, they would soon find that it did not serve them in selling their business. When a business like an RV park is sold, as mentioned before, the minority of the price goes to the physical assets of the park and the majority goes to the business itself. Therefore, without a doubt any bank which is called upon to lend money for the purchase will want to give the business its own checkup. When my partner and I accessed the books for this business what we saw was not pretty.

Bob’s crafty workaround to avoid the tax-man and Sue’s clever bookkeeping, which had kept them under the radar for years was unavoidably exposed when we investigated the P&L ( Profit and Loss statement). The business did not generate enough income to support the purchase price and the bank can only assume that if the business continued to run as the books indicated it had, it would lose money when a large loan payment was added into the expenses.

Running out of options!

There are creative financing options in cases like this which allow for the seller to act as the bank and carry the note for the buyer, yet Bob and Sue saw it as they were too old and would not be around to see that loan to maturity, nor much of its benefit. They were stuck. Their only options were to sell the business well below the value of other well-run parks in the area or stay in business for another two years, into their 90’s, to run an above-board business and improve the financials.

When you’re ready to exit, will your business be an attractive product poised to fetch top-dollar? Or will it be a bargain barrel dent-and-ding special? Learn from Bob and Sue and leave on your terms, with confidence!

Key Lessons

  • Budget – Your books cannot lie! You might lie on your books, however, they can always be verified. How much are you really saving in tax to take that risk which is in-fact digging into your wealth? In Bob and Sue’s case, their shortsighted ploy devalued their business by $700,000!
  • Economics – Ensure that you are running a business and not a charity. Going into a business where you can make friends and your friends come back is about as rewarding as it gets. Just remember, you are still running a business. Bob and Sue had a nightly rate of $50 to stay the night at their RV park, yet their friends who visited and stayed all summer, the ones who capitalized on all of the discounts offered, were paying less than $5 per night. This drastically hurt their business. Where could yours be improved?
  • Legacy Planning – A little bit of foresight and planning prevents heartache like this story. No one is too young to begin planning their legacy. Whether it is to pave the way for your retirement or to build a multi-generational trust, I can help you plan for your exit, ensure your business will be highly marketable at that time, and even put more money in your pocket, today.

If you’re ready to plan your legacy and prepare yourself to leave on your terms, with passive income, you can’t wait another year!

Build your Legacy Plan!

(Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2020/07/12/all-aboard-the-land-yachts-as-rv-bookings-spike-1000/#222dbaa447d5, https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-tips/travel-trends/rv-sales-increase-coronavirus)

Posted by Adam Lendi in Budget & Finance, Business Planning, Life, 0 comments
15
Oct
2020
The top 3 reasons you don’t get the referrals you want!

The top 3 reasons you don’t get the referrals you want!

Remember the last time you were referred business from a friend or a past client just how good it felt? When was the last time that happened? When was the time before that? The best part about working with referrals is that they are sold on you by the referrer before they even met you. The person who sent them was a mixture of a full color glossy brochure of your services and your own personal hype man. If you aren’t getting the referrals you want or if you aren’t seeing them at the frequency you like, it’s likely one of these three reasons.

1. You don’t talk to them

Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, discovered through his studies of primates and humans that us human beings are generally only capable of maintaining 150 stable relationships with those in our lives. This is commonly referred to as Dunbar’s Number. Sure we know far more people, yet we cannot stay in communication, effectively, with more people. When we attempt to contact everyone, we don’t reach anyone as effectively as we could.

If you think sending an email blast to all of your past clients and prospects constitutes relationship maintenance, I challenge you to rate your relationship with Jeff Bezos based upon the last email you received from Amazon. How often do you contact your past clients? your friends and family? people who have sent you referrals in the past??

In the book, The One Thing, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, the first of the lies which mislead us is that all things matter equally. Likewise, not all contacts matter equally. What and who you focus on expands! Rate your database and determine who belongs in your 150.

2. You haven’t given them the tools they need to refer you

Sure, my friends and family know I am a Business Coach. How does that knowledge alone tell them what they need to know to refer me? Our simple human brains are far better at recognizing patterns (and can do so unconsciously) than they are at analytical thinking.

One thing networking groups like BNI (Business Networking International) do well is that they have a ritual each week where their members stand and give a short commercial about their services and what a referral for them looks like. A great example would be if a roofer stands up and says something to the effect of:

“I’m Mike with Mike’s Roofing. After last weeks hailstorm in North Denver I have already had a ton of requests for roof evaluations and have found several which were in need of replacement. If you know anyone who lives in North Denver who was hit by that hailstorm, send them my way for a free roof inspection.”

With this cue in mind, when you leave your BNI meeting and talk with your friends and clients who live in North Denver, you have a better chance of being triggered to ask them about the hailstorm or you’ll at the very least remember Mike when someone mentions the hail damage their car took. How are you arming your ambassadors who are ready to refer you?

3. You haven’t rewarded referrals you’ve received

For us super-connectors, nothing gives us more joy than connecting someone we know who has a need with someone we also know who can satisfy that need and do a great job. For us, creating win-win connections and helping those we care about excites us!

In the book The Five Languages of Love, Gary Chapman describes that we most commonly like to receive and we find the most fulfillment from:

  • Words of Affirmation
  • Acts of Service
  • Receiving Gifts
  • Quality Time
  • Physical Touch

I do not recommend touching your referral sources, however, I do recommend touching on at least one of the other categories. The more of them you touch on, the better chance you have of triggering that one which your referral source most aligns with.

Have you ever received a gift from someone whom you sent a referral to? I have received enough Starbucks gift cards to buy all of you reading coffee… Seriously! I appreciate the gesture and the acknowledgement is enough to keep me sending referrals. The simplest we could all employ is words of affirmation. At a bare minimum, pick up the phone and call them… Don’t text! Tell them you are grateful for their trust in you. Then keep them posted and let them know when you score a win for their friend.

Get purposeful!

If you are ready to grow your business by referrals and to hit the easy button, join me on my free webinar next Tuesday on Building a Referral Based Business. Bring a notepad, some stationary, and a phone! We are going to get into action and grow our businesses together to finish 2020 strong and line up referrals for next year!

Click the image to RSVP
Posted by Adam Lendi in Coaching, Communication, Referrals, 0 comments
12
Oct
2020
These 2 simple hacks will make sure your wires don’t get crossed again!

These 2 simple hacks will make sure your wires don’t get crossed again!

We’ve all heard it before, “it’s not what you said…” I bet your mind just finished that up for you, “it’s how you said it.” Right? You’ve heard this before, yet did you ever take the time to dig into why something seemingly harmless and benign either triggered someone to go to anger or caused a deal to fall apart?

The trouble with communication is that only 7% of it is about the words you’ve carefully selected to speak and the rest is about how you said it and what you were doing, physiologically, when you said it. The way in which you said it accounts for 38% of perceived communication. This includes your tone of voice, the speed at which you spoke, the clarity, and then whether you were too loud or too soft. Still, the largest contributor to our message’s reception, at 55%, is our physiological communication. This includes:

  • Facial Expressions
  • Breathing
  • Gestures
  • Posture
  • Proximity

With so much riding on our body language and our tonality, it’s no wonder text messages and emails so often are the cause of conflict, as the words we say must carry the weight and the other 93% is left to the way the recipient is feeling at the time the message is received. This video clip (not suitable for younger viewers) perfectly illustrates how one person’s message can be distorted if the context is missing:

I’m not here today to teach you to send better texts. I am, however, going to share two simple hacks you can implement today, which will help you crush the 93% of communication which surround the words you say.

Mirror and Match

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We’ve heard that one before and thankfully it’s true! We tend to relate best with those who look and act like us. This simple first tip is something to practice with someone you know, preferably without them knowing, and not in a high-stakes environment.

Next time you interact with someone, watch for the way they carry themselves, their posture, their expressions, what they do with their hands, and even the way they are breathing. To mirror someone, is exactly as it sounds. If you are sitting across from them and they cross their left knee over their right, you’d cross your right knee over the left, to create a mirror of what they are doing. If you are matching, you would cross your left knee over your right.

The key to mirroring and matching effectively is subtlety. We are not mimicking the other person and copying them movement for movement. This can quickly become mockery if employed wrong and could become highly offensive. Watch for significant changes and mirror those behaviors.

If the person is relaxed and laying back into their chair, move from the edge of yours and lay back into yours as well. If the person you are communicating with folds their arms in their lap, fold yours as well. Watch for the demeanor of the other person as you do this. You’re likely to find they become more comfortable and relaxed as you continue to mirror and match.

There are subtle things you can do while actively listening to continue building rapport without the other person knowing it. If they are expressive and talk with their hands, try subtly rolling your hands in your lap to match their behavior, in smaller movements. If they nod their head, gently nod back.

How has their behavior changed? Did you have a better interaction with this person than normal? As you develop these skills, begin bringing them in to higher stake environments. You may find your next negotiation or sale sees better results.

Predicates and Pacing

Your ability to pick up on the type of thinker you are interacting with is your way to unlock their mind and to open them up to your way of thinking. Generally, people fall into one of three main categories, those are Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic. If you keep an ear open to the words people use, you can pin down their category. If they use words like these, they are likely to be…

Visual

  • See
  • Look
  • View
  • Envision
  • Focus
  • Appears to me
  • Mental Image
  • Take a peek

Auditory

  • Hear
  • Listen
  • Sounds
  • Silence
  • Rings a bell
  • Sounds like
  • Tell me
  • Tongue-tied

Kinesthetic

  • Feel
  • Touch
  • Grasp
  • Throw out
  • Get a hold
  • Boils down to
  • Hold on
  • Pull some strings

Pro tip: To help you bridge the other 7% of communication, the words we say, you can use words back to people which fit their style. Example: They say “I heard that your prices are high.” You can say “It sounds like budget considerations are most important to you.”

Once you know who you are interacting with, you can design your communication style around them. Those who are visual and auditory generally tend to group words and give a minimum amount of detail, whereas those who are kinesthetic are more deliberate with their phrasing and tend to give more detail. It’s also common for visual and auditory audiences to speak at a faster pace and with variable pitch, whereas their kinesthetic counterparts tend to be more thoughtful, deliberate, and monotone in their speech. If they have not given you any cues in their words, you may be able to use this reference to pick up on possible styles, which will hep you choose the words you use to speak to them.

More important than putting someone in a box and communicating on that alone is to be constantly assessing and pacing the person with whom you are interacting. Just because someone uses kinesthetic speech patterns does not mean they always speak slower and more deliberately. If they are speaking at a higher pace, meet them there. It could mean they are excited, agitated, or uncomfortable. Knowing that their style prefers to speak more slowly will let you know the direction the conversation is likely to head if you effectively build rapport.

Take action!

Unfortunately, simply reading this post will not make you a better communicator. Effective communication is an art and the best way to improve your art is to practice and get repetition. Go into each interaction with the intent of identifying where the other person is and building rapport. Practice mirroring and matching body language and tonality. Watch for signs of change. You’re bound to see better results in your interactions in business and life.

Posted by Adam Lendi in Communication, 0 comments
02
Oct
2020
How do you create more time in a single day?

How do you create more time in a single day?

I had a moment on Tuesday afternoon. I had just finished an all-day training event focused on developing part of my career. During the training, the hosts asked us before each break to “take the break,” implying that we should relax, decompress, and meditate over what we’d just taken in. I did not take breaks. Instead, I spent my breaks returning missed calls, replying to a seemingly long list of text messages, catching up on emails, and just barely squeezing in a bathroom break before it was time to return.

My moment came not at the end of my training, but rather after I spent another hour catching up on work before zooming across town for an evening appointment. I’d just wrapped up with a client and then I took a call with bad news about another client of mine. By the time I got off the phone, I felt physically exhausted, mentally tapped, and emotionally drained. I then called my wife only to hear that she was at our son’s soccer practice and that they were just finishing. I’m not going to lie, I was devastated. How had I, the guy who is always preaching about values, habits, and time blocking, worked a twelve hour day, missed an important family event, and betrayed my own values?

On Wednesday morning, I grabbed my go-to reference book for moments like these… The ONE Thing, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. Right inside the cover you are met with two sets of animal tracks leading across the page and then diverging on the next, with the words

“If you chase two rabbits… you will not catch either one.”

-Russian Proverb

I realized that I had been doing just that. I already had two businesses running and had recently made the decision to explore another venture, all the while growing and developing myself in one of my core businesses. Can you relate? Have you found yourself pursuing more than one thing and not gaining traction on any of them? If so, read on!

Part 1 of The ONE Thing is “The Lies – They mislead and derail us.” As I went down the list, a list I’d read many times before, I realized I had disregarded several of them. They are:

  1. Everything matters equally – Equality is a lie. When you have a lot to get done in a day, how do you know what to do first? Achievers work from a clear sense of priority. Employ the focusing question (see below) to help guide your decision.
  2. Multitasking – There is no such thing! What we do is multi-switch. The trouble with multi-switching is that it takes time, after switching, to orient to the new task and time again to orient back to the prior task. It is best practice to focus on when task (starting with your ONE Thing) and see it through to completion before starting the next task.
  3. A disciplined life – Success is about doing the right thing… Not doing everything right. Focusing on the right thing and building habits around that will lead to your greatest self.
  4. Willpower is always on will-call – Think of your energy in each day like the battery on your cell phone. When you wake up in the morning, you are at 100%. As you perform tasks and make decisions throughout the day you chip away at that energy. It’s important to capitalize on your most important tasks, because not everything matters equally, when you are fresh.
  5. A balanced life – There is no such thing as balance in life. At our very best, just like an acrobat on a tight rope, we counter our balance with short side-to-side movements. Sometimes we have to swing toward work and put in extra effort, however it must immediately be followed with a counter into your personal life or you will fall.
  6. Big is bad – The only actions which become springboards to success are those which come from big thinking. Think Big – Act Big – Succeed Big

Can you guess which of the lies I was living? As I wrote in my journal that morning, I reflected on my core values, which are: Health, Family, and Empowerment. I took out my planner and reviewed the rest of my week, my to-do list, and my success list. I cleared time, by time-blocking and prioritizing those things which aligned with my values, first, revised my success list, and found time to spend the next two nights together with my wife.

Even practice leaders need a reality check and a reset every once in a while. If you’re stuck and you find yourself looking at your calendar and to-do list, take a minute to reflect on your own values, your goals, your BIG WHY, and ask yourself the focusing question:

What’s the ONE Thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

If you need to go further back, join me on Tuesday for my Your Big Why webinar. Get clarity on your own core values and use them, alongside your goals, to gain clarity on what matters most.

RSVP for Your Big Why
Posted by Adam Lendi in Events, Goal Setting, Habits, Life, Time Blocking, Values, 0 comments
24
Sep
2020
This one secret is why successful people grow faster

This one secret is why successful people grow faster

It’s in our culture and it’s everywhere we look. We are programmed to idolize and hold up successful business owners, world-class athletes, and amazing minds. What is it that sets us apart from these public figures, idols, and celebrities? Birth-right only gets you so far. How does one go from average to extraordinary? I know what it is and it’s simpler than you think.

The most successful people in their craft practice their specialization with a dedication you and I have trouble maintaining. They aren’t experts of everything; they are masters of their one thing. What’s the difference between you and legendary guitarist Eric Clapton? His fingers aren’t anything extraordinary. He didn’t come from a lineage of advanced music genetics. It’s not money and not even the tools he was given when he first learned to play. Eric grew up in an otherwise average military family and was given a cheap guitar as a gift at 13 as a gift. Once he took interest in it, he practiced his craft non-stop and was an advanced player by age 16.

The difference between talented and successful people and those who are average are the habits they build around their one thing.

Notice I said “one thing.” He who attempts to master everything, masters nothing. Perhaps you know someone who dabbles in lots of things and who is a Jack of all trades. While they may be able to fill lots of roles in your life or your business, they generally aren’t the best or the top pick for any one of those roles. Remember when working with a Jack of all trades that he comes second to the Queen and the King.

Identifying your one thing isn’t always simple. In the business world, you’re in a phase we call entrepreneurial. This is where you are figuring out what it is you do best, what stokes your passion, and what it is you do which fills a need for others. This is a normal phase in leadership development and we all must go through it if we are to identify our one thing. We don’t want to get stuck in the entrepreneurial phase for too long though. The goals is to move to a more purposeful execution on your top strengths and the highest and best use of your time and abilities. We call this the journey of moving from E to P.

Entrepreneurs tend to get stuck beneath their ceiling of achievement. They do what comes naturally to them and sometimes they do quite well… for a long time. Those who are most driven tend to go through cycles where they make changes and pivot their strategy, attempting to grown, only to hit their ceiling and fall back to what they are most comfortable with.

To break through your ceiling of achievement it takes intentional goal-setting and purposeful planning to develop a breakthrough strategy. Even then, the battle is not yet won. It takes high level of daily accountability to break away from what is familiar and do the uncomfortable activities we know we must do to break through to the next level, beyond our ceiling of achievement.

Whether you are learning to play guitar, baking pizza, or running a direct to consumer sales business, you must practice your craft in order to perfect it. When you create a rhythm, you can master whatever your one thing is. That rhythm being regular and habitual execution.

Where most habit building goes wrong is in scale alone. If you are striving to learn guitar and you task yourself with one hour of practice each day, you are bound to find yourself exhausted, frustrated, or a combination of the two, before that hour is up. If you fail to meet your hour of practice goal, day after day, eventually you will feel bad about your performance, quit, and resolve that you are not the kind of person who plays guitar.

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear describes the Two Minute Rule. Simply put, the act of executing your habit must take two minutes or less. In the guitar playing example, this could simply be setting the goal to two minutes of guitar playing, per day. Two minutes is far more sustainable than sixty and you’re bound to start going over two minutes as your skill-set improves.

In the case of more complex habits, where two minutes of execution alone may not be enough to get started, find a precursory task which takes two minutes or less, which will make execution inevitable, and build a habit around that. What does this mean?

If your goal is to attain peak physical fitness by exercising daily and your track record leading up to now shows you have not gone to the gym at all in over a year, it may be difficult to begin a daily hour long workout habit. Go smaller. It may not be enough to say you workout for two minutes even. Go smaller still. The habit could be as simple as packing your gym clothes before you go to bed and putting them in your car. This daily habit may be all the trigger you need to make it to the gym each day. If you can record a “W” each day, you’re more likely to uphold the habit. When building a new habit we must standardize before we optimize.

Don’t lose focus. Constantly benchmark your successes, re-analyze your goals, and correct course as needed. As I title my last post, You’re one habit away from your next breakthrough. What is that next habit which will put you at the top of your game?

Want to take it to the next level? Start a 66 Day Challenge. If you don’t know what that is, email me at adam@mymapscoach.com and tell me about the habit you are building. I will bring you up to speed and join you in a 66 Day Challenge in my private accountability group. Get your habit tracker below and get started today.

Start a 66 Day Challenge
Posted by Adam Lendi in Goal Setting, Habits, Life, Tools, 0 comments
10
Sep
2020
What to do when your cheese gets moved

What to do when your cheese gets moved

In his 1988 novel “Who Moved My Cheese?” Dr. Spencer Johnson tells a tale of two mice and two “little people,” living within a maze, on a journey to find their cheese. The cheese is a metaphor for what each character is seeking. For the two mice, it really is cheese. For the people, it is the success, money, love, validation, or whatever it is which they seek.

In the story, each morning the mice rise and lace up their running shoes, while the little people don their jogging suits to enter the labyrinth, in search of their cheese. The mice are named Sniff and Scurry. Sniff has a keen sense of smell and has the ability to detect the best possible route to his cheese. Scurry on the other has quick reflexes and will change direction quickly once he realizes that he has entered a dead-end corridor or that his cheese is not present. The mice have simple brains and are purely reactionary and reflexive. Meanwhile, the little people, named Hem and Haw have complex brains and the ability to analyze situations.

I could easily rewrite the entire story, however it is already a short enough read (seriously, you can read it in less than an hour). As the story goes, one day Sniff, Scurry, Hem, and Haw come upon a cheese station which is full of cheese. Hem and Haw immediately move their homes closer to the cheese station, exchange their jogging suits for more comfortable attire, and live as though the cheese will never run out, until one day it does.

When this happens, it causes great distress for Hem and Haw, as they were not prepared for the change, had not noticed the signs of the diminishing cheese, and had no contingency plan. Sniff and Scurry meanwhile did not adapt their behavior. Each day they would run to the cheese station and when they arrived they would remove their running shoes, tie the laces together, and hang them around their necks, so that they would be ready to run again as soon as needed. Sniff and Scurry were aware of the diminishing cheese supply and were prepared to seek more. As soon as the cheese supply ran out, they did what they were implicitly prepared to do… go find more cheese.

Hem and Haw meanwhile, with their complex human brains lamented over the long lost cheese, assumed someone had simply moved it, and were overall in denial about the fact that they had not been judicious about the situation surrounding their cheese. After some time, Haw began to break the cycle and realized he needed to move on and find another cheese station, just as he had this last one. Hem was unwilling to break the cycle and preferred the comfort of his familiar, even though now cheese-less station.Haw finally develops the courage to break free from the cycle and leave the cheese station. Haw scrawls into a wall of the maze “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” He thought on this and embarked on a challenging, often uncomfortable, and new path to places in the maze he had not yet explored, ultimately leading him to new cheeses he had never experienced before.

I love this story, because it can apply to any situation in life or business where you are upended from your routine and forced to deal with adversity, a new playing field, and new rules. In these times, this story couldn’t be more relevant as we find ourselves faced with a changing landscape and new challenges on all fronts. How have you shown up?

  • Have you been Hem? Frozen, unwilling to let go of the past, and romanticizing about the way things were.
  • Are you a Haw? Acknowledging that things have changed, realizing that they may not return to the way they were, and adapting to the landscape.
  • Were you a Sniff? Did you sense the change as it began happening and react in anticipation?
  • Were you more like Scurry? Did you see the change as it happened and pivot immediately, realizing you could no longer keep heading where you had been?

As great as it sounds to be a Sniff or a Scurry, this is not a natural human tendency for us humans with our complex brains. The vast majority of people respond as Hem did and the lucky few who are able to break their cycles of denial respond as Haw did.

We can prepare ourselves to deal with change to be more of a Sniff or a Scurry. Whether in business or in life, we can continually re-assess our situation. If we set measurable goals, track our progress, and routinely analyze our environment, we can Sniff out the trouble before it emerges and begin our pivot toward a new strategy. What tools and systems do you have in place to routinely analyze your progress toward your goal achievement?

If we have taken the time to plan our goals and have created contingency plans, we can immediately, at the first sign of danger, adopt that plan and take corrective action, just as Scurry would. I wrote a great post about why our top military special forces units create more than one contingency plan and what you can do to prepare yourself for change WHEN (not IF) it happens. (Check it out: Pressing Reset)

Has your cheese moved? Is your supply running low? Are you suddenly out of cheese? Have you not yet found your first cheese? A great starting place will be to return to your goals and your “big why.” Why do you do what it is you do? What are you seeking in life? What would need to happen for you to achieve those goals? I want to share my goal setting webinar from July 2020 where I shared the system of “goal-setting to the now” and the GPS, as my gift to you. May you be as aware as Sniff, as nimble as Scurry, and as wise as Haw. If you find yourself a Hem or know someone who is, I can help.

Remember to tie the laces of your running shoes together and hang them around your neck. You never know how soon you may need them again.

Goal-Setting and the GPS
Posted by Adam Lendi in Business Planning, Coaching, Goal Setting, Tools, 0 comments
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