October 2018

Is Entrepreneurship A Birthright Or Is It Learned? – Grow Great Daily Brief #88 – October 23, 2018

Is Entrepreneurship A Birthright Or Is It Learned? – Grow Great Daily Brief #88 – October 23, 2018

Is Entrepreneurship A Birthright Or Is It Learned? – Grow Great Daily Brief #88 – October 23, 2018

Let me get one thing out of the way. I can’t remember the first time I heard the word, “entrepreneur.” We were “business people.” Period. Or “merchants,” those of us who operated in retailing. 

We were anything, but cool. Musicians, writers, and artists were cool. I spent my entire teens, 20’s and 30’s being anything, but cool. New flash: if you’re not cool when you’re a teen, or in your 20’s and 30’s…then you ain’t ever gonna be cool! 😉 

I’m good with it. 

Some years ago it began to be cool to be an “entrepreneur.” Today, you have to be a “rockstar entrepreneur.” Well, that’s special. Robert Plant and Mick Jagger were (and still are) rockstars, but I didn’t know of any rockstar business people. Okay, that’s not entirely true. In my 30’s I was fascinated by GE’s Jack Welch. I sorta thought Jack was a rockstar. Still do. 

That’s just some context that I think is necessary for today’s question: Is entrepreneurship a birthright – meaning you’re born with it – or is it learned?

I think the answer is, “Yes!”

There are stereotypes of everything. Somebody gains popularity telling a story of how they were a child entrepreneur. Suddenly, everybody thinks that’s the path. So some create a fictional version of their own youth in hopes to draw the admiration of others.

Not every successful entrepreneur was born that way, but every successful entrepreneur learned how to operate a business! 

Carol Roth wrote a book some years ago (2011) entitled, The Entrepreneur’s Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks, and Rewards of Having Your Own Business. She observes that going into business for yourself isn’t the right thing for everybody. Some folks are better off with a job. For the past 20 years or so being an entrepreneur has been cool though. A job? Not so much. The result has been too many people pursuing a path not ideal for them.

Another shift has happened that has nothing to do with being cool. Being old. 😉 Baby boomers with extensive experience and know-how have often found themselves displaced in the workplace. For whatever reasons. Many have found it difficult post-50 to find suitable employment. Some have been forced into entrepreneurship because they’re not financially independent enough to retire so young. Organizations like Encore.org speak to the growing population of older workers who have extraordinary experience and skills. 

All this just means the entrepreneurial landscape is constantly changing. It gives rise to the daily conversation about the craft, the craft of entrepreneurship. Are entrepreneurs born or do they learn it?

Human beings are born with some innate tendencies and personality traits, but we’re all born to adapt. The “born” entrepreneurs seem to have been fixated on money at some early age. Maybe it was poverty. Or maybe it was the opposite. Most kids don’t think about making money, just asking for it. It’s curious to me that even self-proclaimed born entrepreneurs don’t focus on the money, but what kid mows lawns or throws paper because they enjoy the “process.” No, we enjoy the payday!

Taking risks. Being assertive. Being communicative. And persuasive. These can be part of our personality, but even these can be learned. 

Wikipedia says this…

Entrepreneurship is the process of designing, launching and running a new business, which is often initially a small business. The people who create these businesses are called entrepreneurs.

The dictionary says this…

The owner or manager of a business enterprise who, by risk and initiative, attempts to make profits

If entrepreneurs were born then more teens would operate successful businesses. Plenty of kids are involved in business, some of them quite successful. But there’s always an adult or a crew of adults involved. The 14-year-old YouTube or Instagram star has parents and other adults behind the scenes who understand how business works. Business, like basketball, or playing guitar, is a learned skill. Some of us are athletic. Others of us are creative. Some are musical. A few are all of these and more (they’re the ones we love to hate). All of us have to learn and adapt in order to grow, improve and transform. All of us. 

Your entrepreneurship is uniquely your own. I hit RECORD this morning mostly so you’d stop comparing yourself and holding yourself up to some ideal standard based on what you think is culturally true. “Real entrepreneurs are born, not made.” I’m tired of us comparing ourselves with people we think are better. It diminishes the biggest value in all business, putting too much emphasis on money and size. According to one source, there are 28 million businesses in America. 22 million are individually owned without employees. 18,500 are large businesses (defined as companies with over 250 employees). Then there are those rockstar companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and others who occupy so much business press space. The startup world calls them “unicorns.” These are companies who have cracked the billion-dollar mark (in revenues or valuation). 

Consider Jeff Bezos, arguably the most successful entrepreneur of today. Back in 2017 he became the world’s wealthiest person with $90 billion. By this past summer (July 2018) his estimated wealth escalated to $150 billion. When he started Amazon with $300,000 borrowed from his parents, do you think he had the innate skills and talent to run a $178 billion empire? Of course not. Nobody is born with the ability or know-how to do that. 

He figured it out.

You know who the real entrepreneurs are? They’re people just like you. And me. They’re people who figure it out as they go. 

Reid Hoffman co-founded Linkedin. He said, “An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.”

Some people are born to more quickly jump off the cliff. Some are reluctant. Others won’t jump unless they’re pushed. 

Some people are born to learn fast. Some learn slower. Others aren’t interested in learning. Still others are just too lazy to learn.

Bottom line: learn what you need to learn to help yourself succeed. Admit you don’t know everything you need to know. Embrace curiosity and learning. Wear those as badges of honor instead of fretting about how smart you look to others. Your entrepreneurship isn’t about how good you are today…it’s about how good are you willing to become. 

Hoffman’s quote addresses in a single sentence a variety of things involved. Facing the fear of taking the jump even though you don’t know how things may turn out. There’s faith involved. The belief that you can and will figure it out.

There’s the commitment to do it. Not merely to jump, but to figure it out once you do. It’s not acting blindly. It’s preparing and getting ready, but knowing that you until you start you’re unable to really figure it out. Battle plans all look great inside the tent. Once you hit the battlefield is when you find out who the real generals are though. 

There’s the ability to learn on the fly, even in the face of strong adversity. Stop focusing on what you know and get busier learning what you don’t yet know. That doesn’t mean you diminish what you know. It just means you remain focused on your own learning. 

And there’s the ever-present requirement we’re all born with, adaptability. Some of us do it better and faster than others, but we’ve all got it. We all learned to walk and talk. Everybody has spent their life figuring things out. Admittedly, some love it more than others. Some are faster at it than others. But we can all do it. 

Grow Great is all about helping people figure it out. A decade ago when I began my own entrepreneurial journey as a one-man-band, I didn’t have anything figured out. Sometime this week I’ll share a bit more. But for today, know this. My own figuring it out happened rather recently – just a few years ago. It ignited in me a drive to serve business people – entrepreneurs – because I know the key ingredient to Jeff Bezos’ success (and ours, too). It’s about constant learning and summed up in the phrase I continually use, “figuring it out.” It’s not about other people telling us what to do, or how to do it, but rather it’s about our own ability and willingness to surround ourselves with people who can help us figure it out for ourselves. Our success depends on it. It’s what our entrepreneurial journey is all about.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Is Entrepreneurship A Birthright Or Is It Learned? – Grow Great Daily Brief #88 – October 23, 2018 Read More »

"I Can't Think Long-Term Because I Need Cash Flow Now" – Grow Great Daily Brief #87 – October 22, 2018

“I Can’t Think Long-Term Because I Need Cash Flow Now” – Grow Great Daily Brief #87 – October 22, 2018

"I Can't Think Long-Term Because I Need Cash Flow Now" – Grow Great Daily Brief #87 – October 22, 2018

We understand cash-flow pinches. We’re entrepreneurs. And most of us don’t have major funding. Some of us don’t have any outside funding. We bootstrap every step of the way. There’s no judgment here against or for outside funding. To each her own. 

Business owners have to chase business. That means we have to pursue customers. Sometimes it also means we have to chase cash. It’s not a sign of poor management or leadership. Building, growing and even maintaining a business sometimes demand it. The pinch happens for any number of reasons. No point wasting time on those today. Rather, I’m focused on how cash-flow needs today can tempt us to think only short-term.

Whenever I hear an entrepreneur or CEO say something like the title of today’s brief it makes me think of how every single person embraces short-term and long-term thinking no matter what happens to us. Well, we do if we want to exercise wisdom. Foolishness ensues whenever we neglect long-term thinking. 

At lunchtime we’re hungry. What are we gonna eat? Are we gonna think about what we eat and how it may impact us later today? Or tonight?

During a late night meeting, my guest is avoiding caffeine. “I can’t drink it after 6pm or I won’t be able to sleep,” he says. There’s a guy who is thinking ahead. Long-term. Longer-term. He’s not just fixated on here and now. 

A friend has me drive him to the airport in his car so he can use my place to park his car while he’s away. I hop in behind the wheel. The “check engine” light is on. I mention it. He says, “Oh, it’s been on for months. There’s nothing wrong.” I worry anyway, hoping I’ll make it back to my house. Hope is a poor strategy, but it’s his car. 

There is evidence daily – in our lives and in the lives of others close to us – of short-term and long-term strategies. The comment that provides today’s daily brief title speaks to the reality of every entrepreneur to manage today and tomorrow.

Short-term needs don’t have to cause the forfeiture of long-term objectives. 

We can and must manage both. Simultaneously.

I’ve been forced to chase plenty of cash in my career. And I know it can be done while still thinking about the longer view. When we need food, we eat. But when we know we’ve got a big meal tonight, we should go light at lunch. All bets are off when we’re starving though. Survival first. That’s why I’ve spent no time talking about the variety of things that might create our cash crunch. Context matters and there are simply too many variables to talk about. 

If your cash crunch is severe enough to put your enterprise at risk (merely missing a single payroll could do it), then you have to stop the bleeding. Going to the ER isn’t a good long-term strategy for healthcare, but it’s the best option when your life is on the line. Rule one for cash flow management is simple – get out of trouble!

You don’t serve anybody by staying in danger. Just like a visit to the ER though, we have to diagnose why we’re in danger. It’s “fix and figure out” at the same time. Both are necessary and can’t be separated. As with your physical health, you likely have some idea of what may be wrong. Besides, as business people, we’re more acquainted with a possible diagnosis than we may be with our body. We’re not a doctor with that expertise. 

Accounts receivables is a major culprit for many entrepreneurs. Slow paying or late paying customers is up near the top of the list for many small business owners. Show me a leader/manager who doesn’t pay close attention to AR aging reports and I’ll show you somebody headed toward a cash crunch. Collect the money owed to you. Get the money, get the money, get the money. Otherwise, you’ll be chasing cash.

Spending cash you don’t yet have is another major culprit. We land a big deal by booking a major piece of business. Feeling pretty good about ourselves we move forward on some purchases (maybe a truck or two, a new forklift, etc.). Problem, the deal ain’t done until we’ve been paid. We felt so confident in the forthcoming cash that we spent money we don’t yet have. Cash crunch.

I’m not saying there can’t be sudden and unexpected causes of cash crunches, but mostly they’re self-induced problems that stem from a sheer lack of discipline. When we don’t pay attention to the details of operating the business today, we pay for it tomorrow. And today. 

Stop the madness. Do what you must to meet payroll, or get past your immediate cash crunch. But make sure you figure out why it happened so you can stop it. Using yourself as a bank (loaning money to your own company) is sometimes necessary. Just don’t make it a habit because it’s bad business unless you’re doing to fund growth. It’s not good if you’re constantly needing to bail out your company from a cash crisis. Long-term, it won’t work out well for you personally, or your company. 

Cash flow is vital. Ramp up your efforts and knowledge in being better at it. It’s sorta like taking care of our arteries so our blood flow isn’t impeded. When we don’t, bad things happen. Grow your expertise in cash flow management because it will pay off bigtime today, and down the line, too. And like your arterial health, the devil is in the details. 

Don’t ignore the problems. Don’t be ashamed to ask for some expert help either. No need to make hard lessons any harder.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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“I Can’t Think Long-Term Because I Need Cash Flow Now” – Grow Great Daily Brief #87 – October 22, 2018 Read More »

The Peer Advantage by Bula Network – Grow Great Daily Brief Special Episode – October 20, 2018

Give me about 18 minutes and I’ll explain The Peer Advantage by Bula Network and why you may want to enroll.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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The Peer Advantage by Bula Network – Grow Great Daily Brief Special Episode – October 20, 2018 Read More »

What Chaos Do You Create? – Grow Great Daily Brief #86 – October 19, 2018

What Chaos Do You Create? – Grow Great Daily Brief #86 – October 19, 2018

This week an Inc. article about how Jeff Bezos will often forward a customer complaint to an appropriate department head with a single keystroke added to the end of it. A question mark. 

?

That’s it. One keystroke. But it’s a keystroke from The Man. 

The article points out how when these leaders get such an email they’ll drop everything. Professionally. Personally. The mad scramble begins to think through a solution to prevent that complaint from happening again. Bezos is fanatical about customer experience and has created the most customer friendly company in the world. His question mark tactic positively reinforces how serious he is about it. That propels the leadership team to maintain the focus on the customers, not the competitors. It could easily be argued that’s how Amazon buries competitors. All of them.

As the article points out, there may be some big downsides to the question mark, too. Professional pursuits to amplify customer experience may be shoved to a back burner to remedy the concerns of The Man. Personal pursuits (life/work balance) get crushed in the wake of the team’s fear-driven efforts to make The Man happy. 

I have no insights about these, or any other inner workings, at Amazon. Or how Jeff Bezos leads and manages. Remember, we lead people. We manage the work. 

This article cites an interview with an Amazon executive per Business Insider. Bezos has opening confessed that he does this, by the way. That’s not up for dispute. I don’t even think the response of the executives is up for much debate. I’m rather certain they scramble like roaches when the light is turned on. What may be up for some debate is the positive and negative impact it has when The Man (now we’re going to talk about YOU, not Jeff Bezos) causes chaos.

What’s the intent?

Look at your tactics and strategies. Think about the things that are fanatically important to you. For Bezos, it’s the customer experience. What is it for you? 

Knowing yourself is a major component of managing the chaos you create – whether you intend to or not. Here’s a test. If I spent some time with you and your leadership team I’d find out in short order what you really care about. You’d tell me whatever you wanted. Maybe you’d front something to make yourself look good. Maybe not. But you’d tell me the things that you care about, the things that keep you awake at night and the things you wish a superhero could come to solve for you. Your leadership team – perhaps your entire company – might tell me something completely different because in too many cases The Man’s talk and behavior aren’t congruent. That is, too many business owners say one thing, and do something different. 

“Our customers are number one,” say many entrepreneurs. But then they wrangle about the smallest details that involve doing the right thing by the customer because there are dollars attached. They may rant about how much money they’re losing if they do the right thing. Thus proving to the company that customers aren’t number one, money is! So it goes inside many, many companies. Talk is cheap. Show me how your company behaves and I’ll quickly show you what matters most. 

Bezos is serious about customer experience. His intention may be to create chaos congruent with his fanatism. 

Don’t talk out of both sides of your mouth. 

What you preach must match what you do. And what you insist be done.

A big part of my work with top-level leaders is on being congruent. Saying what we mean. Meaning what we say. It’s vital to effective leadership because employees grow increasingly anxious and unhappy because of it. 

Would it shock you to learn that many companies are led by somebody the team can’t quite figure out? “I wonder what they mean,” is a question I’ve heard for the past decade in helping leadership teams improve effectiveness. The Man (or Woman) has an executive meeting. They communicate in such a way that creates chaos among the troops – often unintended. And because of their leadership style nobody in the room speaks up to get clarity. The meeting ends and people are left wondering, “What did she mean by that?” 

The leadership team then scrambles individually, separately and collectively to figure it out. Working, working, working. But not quite sure if they’re working on what they should. 

That scenario happens every single day in too many companies. Partly because lip service doesn’t accurately mirror actual service. We say one thing and do something else. 

It also happens because communication is unclear. As entrepreneurs, we live in our heads and are speed freaks. Moving fast. Sometimes furiously. Sometimes it leads us to unclear communication that makes sense in our head, but not to our team. It’s compounded depending on how we lead. Our style and personality have an impact. If we’re hard-charging and rather intimidating to our crew, they may avoid any confrontation, including one necessary so they can know what we most want. 

Leveraging chaos for good.

I’m not going to get into a debate about whether Amazon executives have their work/life balance disturbed by the Bezos question mark. Life isn’t perfect. Neither is leadership. Amazon’s success speaks for itself and there’s no evidence that Jeff Bezos isn’t a man of integrity and honesty. I’m not prone to judge him or anybody else. I just observe knowing that my observations are very incomplete. And I’m sure he’s ruffled many feathers because achievement does that. At scale. Accomplish more, more feathers get ruffled. 

I don’t think chaos is evil or bad. I think it just needs to be congruent. Consistent with your values and goals. 

The Bezos question mark reinforces what he preaches. Whatever chaos that may create inside Amazon is likely a price Bezos is willing to pay. It’s more than an Inc. article. It’s Amazon culture!

Context always matters! The question mark works for Bezos because it scales. We’re talking about a company with 2017 revenues of about $178B. We’re not operating businesses that large so our chaos looks very different. Should you employ the same tactic? Probably not…because you don’t have the same scale. That means you can take a much more personal, communicative approach. You can more fully explain what your concerns are, what you’re thinking and what you want to be done. 

Amazon does about 35 transactions every second, averaging $34 million daily. Those 35 transactions every second average $1084. That’s unprecedented scale. So before we throw rocks at the tactic of the Bezos question mark I think we’re better served at understanding the chaos it causes and the results it gets so we can learn. So we can figure some things out to help us grow our leadership and our enterprises. 

Growth isn’t always comfortable. It’s often chaotic and filled with making sphincters pucker. It’s not about being a jerk. Or being ill-tempered. It’s about making sure we keep our organization on point, focused on what matters most. As entrepreneurs, we get to decide that for ourselves and our organizations. It’s the value we bring to the world when we make our dreams come alive. 

So I’m going to encourage you to create chaos. Just make sure it’s chaos that’s congruent with your true values and purpose.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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What Chaos Do You Create? – Grow Great Daily Brief #86 – October 19, 2018 Read More »

Don't Compare Somebody's Past To The Future You Hope For - Grow Great Daily Brief #85 – October 18, 2018

Don’t Compare Somebody’s Past To The Future You Hope For – Grow Great Daily Brief #85 – October 18, 2018

Don't Compare Somebody's Past To The Future You Hope For - Grow Great Daily Brief #85 – October 18, 2018

Yesterday we asked the question: “Do You Really Have To Find Somebody Who Has Already Done What You Want To Do?” The answer is, “No.” 

Today, let’s talk about the temptation to compare somebody’s past accomplishment with what we hope to accomplish in our future. Hint: it’s not likely the best way to spend our time or energy.

Here’s how it goes. We want to accomplish something we’ve never accomplished before. We see somebody else – maybe a whole lot of somebodies – who have done it. So far, so good.

The problem isn’t the observation or the attempts to learn. The problem is comparing their achievement – the final result – with the required work we’ll have to put in to accomplish the same thing. Or something similar. 

It’s the difference in looking at the finished product versus the raw materials required to build it. Or the difference in the world-class performance versus the years of toiling it took to be able to perform at that level. 

I get it. All of us do. 

We want a better future. That’s as it should be. People need hope, purpose, responsibility, and achievement (even the quest for achievement makes a positive difference). 

What we don’t always want is the toll required. We’d like to get in the express lanes toward our fondest dreams without paying the price required. 

Part of this phenomenon is driving me to make some small adjustments in this podcast. I’m going to start including, as much as possible, that hard stuff. The gap between knowing and not knowing. The gap between failure and success. The gap between where we’re at and where we want to be. It’s in that gap where we spend our lives, but so few people talk about it. Instead, we’ve been fooled into thinking we have to focus on the goal. I’ve contributed as much as the next guy or gal to the storyline of keeping your eyes fixed on the horizon where your big goal can be seen. It has some value, but it’s not where I believe the most value is found. 

Rather, the most value I’ve learned is found in that no man’s land between not knowing and knowing. I also have learned why it’s so hard. 

You can’t unlearn what you’ve already learned. Even with the concentrated effort, it’s hard to go back and remember the experience before you learned it. I know I learned my ABC’s and basic math. I rationally know there was a time in my life when I didn’t know any of that, but I can’t remember life then. In the last decade, I’ve learned a ton of things I didn’t know before, but it’s virtually impossible for me to go back and put myself in a mental state where I can fully remember life before that knowledge. 

Then there’s the magic of remembering it the way we want versus the way it really was. Kinda like our parents walking uphill in the snow, both ways, to school. We can amplify the difficulty. Or minimize the timing, chance or serendipity. We can remember how vital our role was, while we minimize the role anybody else may have played. 

Ecclesiastes 9:11 “I returned and saw under the sun that— The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all.”

It’s true, but we don’t like to acknowledge that when we’re looking at our success. We’ll happily admit how true it is when we’re looking at somebody else’s success though. “Boy, were they lucky!” Or, “Boy, did he have great timing!”

You know why I fixate on the phrase “you’ll figure it out”? Because you will. You have to. Others can help (that’s my professional mission…to evangelize that notion and to help entrepreneurs surround themselves with people who will help). But you have to find your own path and understand that close examination or the cursory examination of somebody else’s finish line isn’t going to necessary show you the best path to take as you leave your own starting line. 

Use it for inspiration. Use it to help spark your own process to figure it out. Just don’t waste time trying to dissect it in hopes you can replicate it. You can’t. You’re not them. You’re YOU.

Your path may look similar. It may not look like it even belongs in the same universe. That doesn’t matter. Don’t be conned into thinking it does. 

Somebody else’s’ creation isn’t your own. Envy and jealousy aren’t positive paths to an improved future. You’ll never grow as great as you can by obsessing on somebody else’s accomplishment. 

Instead, devote yourself to putting in the work to figure out what you can best accomplish. Figure out why you want what you want. Get really clear about it. Then set about to spend whatever time is necessary between where you are right now and where you want to be. And here’s the real hard part. You don’t know how long that gap is going to last. It could be months. It’s more likely going to be years. Depending on how you’re defining “where you want to be.” Short-term and long-term are relative things. 

Life has been defined as the dash that appears on grave markers. The dash between the date of birth and the date of death. Think of that dash as the gap between where you currently are and where you most want to be. It’s where living happens. It’s where you question, test, try, fail, fail some more, then fail some more, achieve a little success, make a million adjustments and persist for however long you’re willing…until you give up or until you’re able to plant your flag or run your victory lap. 

Let’s aim for the lap. I’m with you. You’ll figure it out.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Don’t Compare Somebody’s Past To The Future You Hope For – Grow Great Daily Brief #85 – October 18, 2018 Read More »

Do You Really Have To Find Somebody Who Has Already Done What You Want To Do? – Grow Great Daily Brief #84 – October 17, 2018

Do You Really Have To Find Somebody Who Has Already Done What You Want To Do? – Grow Great Daily Brief #84 – October 17, 2018

Do You Really Have To Find Somebody Who Has Already Done What You Want To Do? – Grow Great Daily Brief #84 – October 17, 2018

Common (but foolish) wisdom says, “Find somebody who has already done what you want to do to help you.” It’s likely the result of a human trait we’ve all got. Laziness. We want a shortcut. To copycat somebody else so we don’t have to put in the work. Why machete our way through the jungle if we can walk right behind somebody else who is doing all the hard work? It sounds smart. And easy. Which is why it’s such an attractive thought. 

Arrogance sets in. I see it pretty regularly in social media when somebody blasts somebody simply based on some perceived success level. It’s the same wisdom that gives greater credence to what a Bentley owner might say about something versus a Honda owner. The presupposition is the Bentley owner is smarter and has better answers. Maybe. Maybe not.

I’m a hockey fan. I’ve never played the game, but I’ve studied it fanatically for decades. Even done my share of amateur coaching, successfully. The Dallas Stars won the Stanley Cup in 1999 behind a head coach who never played high-level hockey. Ken Hitchcock discovered he had a knack for motivating players when he was growing up playing hockey. That led to a 10-year stint coaching teenage boys in AAA midget hockey in his home country, Canada. He was successful. That led to an opportunity to coach a minor league professional team where his success continued. Then he jumped on board a professional NHL team, the Philadelphia Flyers, as an assistant coach, which led to him taking the helm of the Dallas Stars’ minor league affiliate team in Kalamazoo. That’s where he was when January 1996 rolled around and he was hired to be the head coach of the Dallas Stars. A man who never played in the NHL. He never played professionally. Playing wasn’t his skill, but coaching was. 

In 1999 he and his Dallas Stars lifted Lord Stanley’s Cup for the first (and so far, only time). And the next year, he took them back to the Stanley Cup Finals where they lost to the New Jersey Devils. The Dallas Stars didn’t approach the problem of finding a new head coach by saying, “Let’s find somebody who has already done what we want to do.” Hitch had demonstrated he knew how to coach and get the best out of players and teams. 

There’s a first for everything. 

In order for you to experience your first is it necessary for you to have somebody alongside you who has already been there? Just think about all the terrific accomplishments, like the Dallas Stars experiencing a championship for the first time, that disprove that. In fact, guess who Ken Hitchcock replaced as head coach? A man named Bob Gainey, an NHL Hall of Famer who has 5 Stanley Cups as a player. Plus the one with Dallas when he was their General Manager. But he was never able to take them to a Championship victory. And unlike Hitchcock, Gainey is one of the top 100 NHL players of all time. 

Do you remember when you first started your career…and when you ran into a problem…who you called?

Let me guess. Mom or dad? It’s likely. 

Did you call them because they had seen this problem before and you instantly thought, “This won’t be new to them!” ??

Ridiculous. They likely had no clue what you were talking about unless you entered the same field they were in. You know why you called who you called? 

Because you trusted them and knew they cared about you.

You called them because you knew they’d put their own interests behind yours. They just wanted to help you navigate the issue for your own success, not theirs. It’s what parents do. And trusted friends. 

Too frequently we feel like we’re being completely rational when we set about to find a person to help us – a person who has already accomplished what we want to accomplish. But we give no consideration to the context of them versus us. 

Question: Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla?

Why?

You can’t rationalize why you prefer one over the other. It just is what it is. It’s your preference. Is it emotional? Not entirely, it’s also involving your taste buds. 

I live in Texas and cilantro is a big player in Mexican food. I love Mexican food, but I hate cilantro. And it’s more biological than emotional. A small percentage of people taste soap when they eat cilantro. I’m one of them. You could rationalize with me all day long, but I taste what I taste. Soap isn’t quite what I’m going for when I eat Mexican food. Sing to me the virtues of cilantro and I don’t care. 

So it goes with trying to copy what somebody else has done. They’re them. You’re you. You have to figure out YOU. And you don’t have to be selective to lean solely on somebody who has already accomplished what you want to accomplish. 

Yes, there are certain trainings and education that can’t be discounted. Learning math from somebody who doesn’t know it themselves isn’t going to work out very well. For either of you. But we’re usually not talking about specific sciences or facts. People want to make a million bucks so they think finding a millionaire is the path toward accomplishing that. But there are millions of paths toward making a million dollars. Lebron did it. So did David Letterman. They don’t belong in the same conversation so how it going to work out to seek out somebody who has done what you hope to do? 

You are you. Unlike anybody else. Yes, with quite a lot in common with many others, but with enough uniqueness to completely throw off the equation of being able to copy somebody else. 

My son is going through some big growth and trying to figure out how to navigate that growth. He’s got many options. A good problem to have. But at the heart of the issue is one question, “What does HE want to do?” It’s got nothing to do with reasoning or rational thinking. It’s got to do with emotions and preferences. We talk about it and I don’t impose on him what he “should” do because I’m not him. We’re uniquely different. And what he may want today…is sure to change over time. As a business owner, he has to decide how he wants to spend his days. What does he want to do? 

I’m only nudging him to go all in on where he’s strongest. Soar with your strengths and all that. Because I know that’s his greatest competitive edge, and I also know what’s what he most loves to do. If he hated it, then that wouldn’t work – any more than me loving cilantro would work (unless I suddenly develop an affinity for the taste of soap). 

Who can best help us?

People who care about our success without getting tangled up in their own success. People who understand us. People who are intent on serving us. People with intentions of never hurting us. That’s why when you started out you called mom or dad. It wasn’t likely because they had seen your problem before. That didn’t matter. What mattered is they were fully invested in you and you knew it. 

It’s the power of others. The power and impact of surrounding ourselves with people who are anxious to help us. And don’t discount the poower of our ability to return the favor. Reciprocity is a big deal. Quite frequently we get more from helping others than they do. You’ve experienced that, too. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Do You Really Have To Find Somebody Who Has Already Done What You Want To Do? – Grow Great Daily Brief #84 – October 17, 2018 Read More »

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