The Peer Advantage by Bula Network is a new initiative that I’ve been working on this year. Like most things, I’ve gotten it wrong until I could figure out how to get it right. And I have a client to thank for helping me figure it out.
NOTE: If you want to dig through my previous content about the peer advantage, including a chapter by chapter summary of the book, THE POWER OF PEERS — go here.
I won’t bore you with the stories of my fascination with professional “paid-for” peer groups, which began about 4 or 5 years ago. Having never experienced it, I found it remarkable how small groups of people with one big thing in common – like business ownership, or being CEOs or CFOs – could elevate their performance so much faster and easier than going it alone. For many reasons I found it difficult – for me, impossible – to ignite that fascination in prospective clients. Being part of a professional peer advisory group (which in no way resembles the free mastermind group where the 5 factors of peer advantage aren’t readily present). My good friend Leo Bottary, author of THE POWER OF PEERS and most recently PEERNOVATION crafted the 5 factors (Leo and I produced the Peernovation podcast together:
Select the right peers – it involves more than surrounding yourself with the right people…you need to be surrounded by people well suited to share and understand your pursuits.
Create a safe environment – deep conversations about critical intellectual and emotional issues require an environment where it’s safe to share, be vulnerable (judgment-free), and where confidentiality is sacred. What happens in the meeting stays in the meeting.
Utilize a smart guide – leaders who learn to serve the groups they lead by acting as an equal part of the group triad.
Foster valuable interaction – a group culture that values safety and confidentiality. Where conversations happen by design, not by accident.
Be accountable – a place where group members don’t tell each other what to do, but where they tell each other what they plan to do. A place where individual members own their own solutions.
For the past dozen years or so my work has been 100% personalized, individual, and confidential. It’s been highly rewarding and effective for my clients.
I set about to add to my practice a professional peer advisory group. I set about to form one charter group of business owners dubbed The Peer Advantage by Bula Network. Quite quickly I was contacted by a few very successful business owners who were interested. I interviewed them, attempting to hit that first factor – select the right peers. I invited two of the applicants, prepared to launch as soon as I found two more suitable members. Then COVID19 made a grand entrance.
Serendipity happened.
A client asked me if I ever did any group coaching? “Um, no,” I said. But the wheels spun up to speed almost immediately.
Fast forward just a few weeks and it was clear to me that there was an ENORMOUS NEED that I could ideally fill. High-performing leaders or those who would love to become high-performing leaders could achieve higher performance together and with my help. But instead of putting the focus on the group, which is an extremely valuable component of high-performance – BUT it’s very hard for people who have never experienced it to see the value of it. And quite frankly, it scares some people.
Additionally, the time required for these groups can be a full-day a month, or a half-day each month – time very few leaders are willing to take out of their schedule. Nevermind that there’s high value in a leader making the investment in themselves and their organizations. It’s a hard sell. And I get it.
So I began to approach this as I have my entire career while operating companies. I dove into the deep end of the pool to figure out the “ideal outcome.” Fixated on efficiency and effectiveness has characterized my approach to building organizations and businesses. But in my personal fascination with peer groups, I lost my way a bit and realized I had veered off track from what had always been my focus – THE IDEAL OUTCOME.
Well, the ideal outcome for me personally and professionally must begin with the ideal outcome for my clients. I’m no different from any other business – our customers and clients must first be pleased. Else, everything is worthless. So it begins and ends with the value and benefit to the customers and clients. I made a cardinal mistake – I had mostly attempted to create this new offer of a peer advantage experience on my own. Now, I was sitting across a conference table – socially distanced from a client who was asking me why I had never considered group coaching. The client remarked, “Why aren’t more people taking advantage of this kind of coaching? I’ve been doing this 23 years and I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
Inside I mimicked Homer Simpson, “Doh!”
The specific ideal outcomes for my clients are as personal and individual as my clients. And it’s for them to decide. I don’t impose on clients because that’s never my role. Nor would it be for their best. But as a service provider, I have to anticipate what might be their ideal outcome and generally speaking, that’s not real hard. I simply had to think about it and start asking more questions.
Within a few months, I had it distilled. This week I’ve begun a very targeted offer based on all this.
The ideal outcome begins with high-performing teams, groups and organizations. At the end of the day, nothing else matters. That’s always been true of my work as a leadership coach. It’s not about feeling better (although that can happen). It’s about improved performance! Sustainable high performance.
The ideal outcome includes making the best use of time. High-performing leaders are pressed for time. Some of that is necessary, some of it is because of how they’re wired. To stay busy. Constantly in motion.
The ideal outcome includes being highly cost-effective. High-performing leaders don’t waste resources. Money is the chief resource (after time).
The ideal outcome includes privacy and confidentiality. High-performing leaders are like everybody else, often they’re reluctant to be vulnerable. It’s vastly easier in a private setting than in front of a small group of people.
The ideal outcome includes enough of a group component where on occasion the high-performing leader can interact with other high-performing leaders to discuss things that will help everybody in the group. The interaction sparks innovation and gets the juices really flowing.
So after a few months of investigation and planning, it was clear that I could offer high-performing leaders an offer that would achieve each of these ideal outcomes. The focus would be on becoming or elevating existing high performance. Throughout the team, group and organization. It would be a program that would not only help these leaders achieve it within their immediate teams or direct reports, but it would help them spread that high performance throughout their entire organization.
It would demand just 4-and-a-half hours of time invested each month. Three of those hours would be private and confidential with me. Time where these leaders could be vulnerable and open without any fear. Time where they could be challenged in a safe, confidential setting.
It would require just 90 minutes in a single group meeting where they might want to bring forward something that had been discussed in those private sessions. Perhaps something else. And because everybody in the group would be in the exact same position, doing the exact same kind of work – they could really leverage their collective insights, experiences, wisdom and knowledge to help each other.
And this wouldn’t cost thousands of dollars a month, but hundreds.
You could think of it in different terms. Based on a 5-day work week, it amounts to 13.5 minutes a day to invest in YOURSELF and YOUR ORGANIZATION. A small investment to achieve higher performance and create a sustainable culture inside your organization. All at a cost that any organization can afford.
My first charter groups are going to be leaders inside city government in the state of Texas. I’m intentionally focused on this narrow niche. I’m additionally going to focus on small to medium-sized business owners. Well, more accurately stated, “owners of small to medium-sized businesses.” I’m not looking for folks whose size is small to medium. I’m happy to help big ‘ol boys and gals, too! 😉
If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired — and ready to anticipate and pursue the ideal outcome for your team, group or organization, then I’d be honored to hear more about it. Go here and let’s talk. It’s completely free and there is no obligation of any kind. Just go to https://bulanetwork.com/free
I first met Leo Bottary via an email I sent him. A cold email. He had no clue who or what I was.
I had read his first book (co-authored with Leon Shapiro, CEO of Vistage) – THE POWER OF PEERS. I wanted to see if Leo had any interest in starting a podcast. I found great value in the ideas put forth in that first book. And wondered if a podcast might help get the word out that there’s tremendous power in helping others and allowing others to help us.
I did a series of audio summaries of that first book – THE POWER OF OTHERS – right here. You may want to go back to check out those episodes. Click here and you’ll see the entire list. Or click here for the first in that series of summaries – and go here for Leo’s interview after I summarized all 11 chapters of that first book.
Well, one thing led to another and we launched a podcast called YEAR OF THE PEER. Today, it’s called PEERNOVATION (just like the title of Leo’s third book).
Leo has intentionally priced it for the widest possible audience. We both hope you’ll invest in a copy. Better yet, we hope you’ll employ the framework to help you become part of or leader of a higher-performing team.
Today, Leo joins me as we talk about his childhood and growing up in Boston to a fantastic story about his father’s late-life success in a brand new career.
Cue Tom Petty’s classic hit song from his fabulous Wildflowers’ album, Time To Move On.
Tom’s singing about divorce, but if I were singing the song it’d be about my long-last professional shift. Today, I hope you get some value as I rehearse with you the general angst and execution (or lack) of the past year. As we near the end of it and stare into the face of 2020 it feels right to craft this final chapter of the Grow Great podcast.
I’m hoping you’ll stay along for the ride because my intent on continuing to provide high value – in fact, I’m making this change because I want to up my game in bringing you HIGHER value.
For over 4 decades I’ve been immersed in business. All my activities have been focused on the business of building and growing business. I’ve spent most of that time leading businesses. And I’ve loved almost every mile along the journey. But it’s time to move on.
No, I’m not leaving business behind, but I am changing direction. More accurately, I’m changing my focus and going singular rather than being as broad as I’ve been over the past decade.
When I entered the professional services arena a decade ago it was real roll-up-your-sleeves-get-your-hands-dirty consulting work. I was intent on helping business owners shore up operationally. Quite often it involved retooling sales processes, too. It was the under-the-hood stuff that every business requires.
Over time it morphed. Quite organically. It ended up becoming coaching, which I found suited me unlike anything else. I’m ideally wired for it, as I had discovered when I was in my early 20’s. I enjoy communication, learning, discovery and my natural curiosity drives me to ask questions seeking understanding. In short, it was right up my ally, suited to my strong suit because it was all about PEOPLE. It was about me doing whatever I could to help people figure it out for themselves. I loved it because everything about it felt right.
There’s a character strength assessment that I’m fond of. A buddy – Joe Bacigalupo of AlliancesHub International put me onto it. I knew something of the folks behind it because I had read (years ago) a book entitled, Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. He’s one of the people behind the VIA Survey, the folks leaning hard into character strengths (which differ from talent or skill strengths).
That assessment is meaningful because among my core character strengths are things I’ve long known about myself. Things like forgiveness are big things for me. And easy.
My passion to go deep with people in an effort to serve them has always been strong. It’s been growing stronger and stronger over the past decade. I’m naturally bent toward being a person with whom others can feel safe. Confidentiality isn’t hard for me. Not judging people or telling them what they “should” do it’s either. I’m happy to give people my opinion if they press, but I mostly am geared to asking questions so they can figure out for themselves what is best for them. This is all in the context of business or organizational behavior. So candor is up near the top of things I cherish most.
What I’ve learned the past 4-5 years is that this is woefully lacking in the world. But not really. Let me explain.
Talk with 10 people and I guarantee if you direct the right questions toward them you’ll discover each of the 10 was powerfully impacted by somebody. Likely a number of somebodies. In other words, they leveraged the power of others. We all do it, but most of us don’t do it strategically or even tactically. It just happens organically. Or not.
I began to look more closely at the people at the bottom of the achievement pile. People who suffer all sorts of challenges that I have never faced. Many of them lacked good influence from others. The child who grows up abused and neglected may lean into poor and foolish behavior. Devoid of having the power of others, that child can develop into an adult lacking the necessary wisdom to navigate life successfully. Yes, there are outliers — those who grow up like that and in spite of the horrific odds, they choose to lean hard into wisdom opting to make the best choices possible so they can escape the dungeon of despair.
It’s not so shocking to me because as a man of Faith I’ve long known what the Bible says about such things.
1 Corinthians 15:33 “Be not deceived: Evil companionships corrupt good morals.”
The converse is equally true. Surround yourself with good people and it can foster higher behavior. In our organizations, it produces higher human performance. Just take a close look at any group or team that is high achieving and you’ll see it. The power of others.
Four years or so ago things took a professional turn for me. I was given an opportunity by a very forward-thinking City Manager looking for an executive coach for one of her Directors. Thrust into an organization whose goal was to deliver superior service to a demanding city population, it was quite different than my typical trifecta of business building stuff: a) getting new customers, b) serving existing customers better and c) not going crazy in the process.
I found two of the three were still in place though. Mostly, I found the focus was solely on PEOPLE. It was a complete focus on PEOPLE. People working well with other people. People struggling to work well with others. People unable to accurately read a situation. People struggling to communicate effectively. People finding it hard to lead. People finding it hard to follow. A lot of culture stuff. A lot of team stuff. Chemistry stuff. Emotional intelligence stuff.
My eyes were opened. This was my niche. Not serving city government, but focusing on PEOPLE. It felt right. Everything about it felt right.
While I’d been an “operator” all my life and I still immensely enjoy strategy and operations…nothing trumps PEOPLE. For me, nothing trumps being able to go deeply enough with people where real help, support, and service can happen. It fueled me, unlike any work I’d ever done.
I pushed a bit harder into the PEOPLE side of things. It wasn’t easy. I was too reluctant – now that I look back – to let go of operational stuff. When you’ve so embraced being an operator for so long it’s a tough thing to shed. But slowly I began to intentionally work on it.
Then there’s the reality of client services. You do what you must to get clients, serve clients and keep clients. It wasn’t always the direction I wanted to go, but I did it anyway. Increasingly my heart wasn’t in it. But a clean pivot didn’t seem possible. Besides, now that I’ve got clarity I didn’t have in real-time.
Along the way, I reached out and made a connection with Leo Bottary. Leo had co-authored a book, The Power Of Peers. We started a podcast, which I produced, The Year Of The Peer. From that podcast, Leo wrote a second book, “What Anyone Can Do.” After that, I joined him as a cohost of our current podcast by the same title.
Associating with Leo was very intentional because I knew he was a smart guy about peer groups and peer advantage. I wanted to learn all I could about peer advisory groups. Why do they work? Why don’t more people take advantage of them? What makes a great peer advisory group? Why do people join them? Why do they leave? I had many questions. I knew I wanted to operate in that space. In fact, three years ago I knew I wanted Bula Network to be a peer advisory company operating virtual or online peer advisory groups. I also knew the first group needed to be SMB owners. Entrepreneurs operating companies doing a few million bucks to companies doing in excess of $200M. I’m an operator and I was driven to build this first group of people who make the decisions, and who are close to the customers and the employees.
It takes time to figure it out. It took me too long. Proof that no matter how smart you are, figuring it out is hard work. 😀
2020 is a fitting year. A fitting number. 2020 provokes most of us to think of VISION.
My vision is clearing. Well, not physically. I need reading glasses, but professionally, even personally, many things are getting clearer. It’s been a long journey, but I rather think things happen in due time. I suppose things happen in a timeline that CAN work to our advantage if we’re wise. I’m trying hard to be wise.
Over the summer I really started trying to build The Peer Advantage by Bula Network. I had figured I could get it up and running by the late fall of this year. It didn’t happen. And it was entirely my fault. I didn’t give it the focused effort it deserved. I had so many irons in the fire because I said YES to too many things and I wasn’t discriminating enough. Learn from my errors.
“If everything is important, then nothing is important.”
That’s my quote. I first said it when I was a teenager as I observed the insanely erratic behavior of a business owner I was working for. He taught me a lot because he was a jerk and not very smart. I learned early on what NOT to do to succeed at business. He was second generation and dad had built a good business. So good that even a moron son couldn’t quite ruin it at the time. 😉
Here I was being my own jerk and being stupid. “Who’s the moron now?” I often thought.
I’d have conversations with people about peer advantage. Most had no idea about it. It was so far beyond the realm of anything they’ve ever experienced that they struggled to see how it could help them. I searched for language to help convey it. I’m good with words. And have never struggled to find ways to connect. But that wasn’t really the challenge.
The challenge was like a hydra – a monster with many heads. I had too many irons in the fire. I wasn’t focused. The Peer Advantage wasn’t’ seen as solving any one problem. Customers want solutions and a generic solution – helping you make better decisions – isn’t nearly precise enough.
Leo is an adjunct professor and he was conducting a master’s level online class for a university. He thought it’d be a good exercise for his class to do a project on The Peer Advantage, this new initiative I was planning to launch. Bright people from all over the globe devoted themselves for 2 weeks to develop a brilliant strategic communication plan to help me. I interacted with the class via a video conference twice. Their work resulted in a brilliantly constructed slide deck and advice that my brand should become The Peer Advantage by Bula Network.
They did great work and I did very little with it. Again, too many distractions. Too many irons still in the fire. Saying YES too many times and not saying NO nearly enough. Nobody to blame but myself. I simply needed to make up my mind. I needed to draw a line in the sand and fully commit. But I was reluctant.
Belief. It Matters.
True confession time. I *strongly* believed in the service. I knew the power of, “Who you surround yourself with matters.” I also knew from experience how tough it is to help other people see the value of peer advantage. I was suffering the symptoms of it myself. Vulnerability. Courage. Those are big issues. They impact belief and belief drives everything. Without belief, there is little confidence and without confidence, there’s never success!
But I did believe in THE POWER OF OTHERS.
I did believe in how dramatically it could positively change the lives of anybody who dare join themselves to THE PEER ADVANTAGE.
I did believe in my ability to have the necessary conversations to find and select the best people. I even believed in my ability to convey the benefits of it to prospective members.
What I didn’t believe in was the sales conversation.
What I didn’t believe in was my ability to make this singular focus work, to the exclusion of everything else. It was scary. Deep down I knew I could, but at a surface and practical level, it was frightening.
Along the way, some personal challenges erupted that changed my life. No, I didn’t get a divorce. I’m still married to the girl I fell in love with when I was 18. In January we’ll hit our 42nd wedding anniversary. But life throws all of us curveballs and we’ve experienced our own. So have you. I’m not claiming mine are special because they aren’t. But you know that personal challenges, especially those that deeply affect us, are impossible to compartmentalize. Our lives are our lives. We’re not just podcasters, or business owners, or leaders. We’re people. And there it is again. PEOPLE.
More and more I was falling in love with what I deemed, “leveraging the power of others.”
Emotionally and mentally that was my focus. I couldn’t get my mind off of it, but I was still distracted with too many other activities. They were robbing me of any opportunities to succeed at what I most wanted to achieve. I was my own worst enemy but didn’t fully realize it.
I was isolating myself. How ironic, right? The guy falling in love more and more with THE POWER OF OTHERS. And he’s not availing himself of the power of others. Not professionally anyway.
During my personal crisis, I was fully leveraging the power of others. Four men served me. Three old men and one younger man. All of them gospel preachers. We all share a common faith. I’ve known each of them for a long time, three of them (the old men) all my life. They helped me in ways that even a wordsmith like me can’t properly express.
One of them, the youngest of the eldest, was 75. He’d been battling health issues, but nobody was expecting a hospital visit end with his sudden death. He was a big figure in my life. A man who loved me enough to challenge me. And it was terrific because I knew he cared deeply about me. Suddenly, I was without him and I’d never been without him.
A week ago the eldest of the eldest died. He was 88 and had been fighting his own health challenges, but none of us expected him to go to bed and not wake up. Another major void in the great men who have surrounded me all my life.
The last of the eldest is 83, a man as special as any man in my life. This week he’s prepared to enter hospice. And while I know he’s ready, I equally know I am not. I’m not ready to press on without access to his wisdom. He’s been a brilliant guide of unparalleled importance in my life always.
Thankfully, my fourth advisor is in his mid-40’s so I’m hoping to have him around for a while. 😉
All that to help you better understand my context and my struggles. You can relate, right? I know you can. It’s how life happens. It’s the struggle of our lives. And sadly, I’m confessing that professionally I’ve struggled because I’ve failed (woefully) in leveraging the power of others.
I know, I’m a hypocrite. Here I am, the guy harping at you to leverage the power of others. To be courageous enough to be vulnerable so you can achieve more. And do it faster. And as much as I know that’s true. As much as I believe it. I’ve failed to do it myself. It boils down to just one thing, a dreadful lack of courage. My belief hasn’t been strong enough. My fears have been too big.
Fear. It’s real. And it destroys all of our dreams.
My fears were real. And many.
I was fearful I’d fail. Fearful I’d look stupid. Fearful I’d be judged.
All of which is true. I will fail. I will look stupid. People will always be judging. Nothing I do is going to help me escape any of them. Those things and many other fears will happen no matter what. Don’t we all know that? Surely we do — logically anyway. But not emotionally.
Something happened to my fear when my 88-year-old mentor died a week ago. Something clicked as I sat in that funeral service. Something happened as I put my right hand on the rail to carry his casket as a pallbearer. Something happened as I sat there and wept at my loss. Something happened as I surveyed having done the very same thing back in 2013 when I helped carry the casket of my lifelong best friend, Stanley. This 88-year-old man was Stanley’s dad. Something happens and it’s up to us to leverage it. To make the most of us.
A flash of insight overcame me. As if somebody had reached deep inside me and flipped a switch helping me see things more clearly than ever before. Instant feelings of stupidity and hard-headedness quickly gave way to more positive thoughts. “I don’t care anymore.” Cue Phil Collin’s hit song. It’s another song about divorce, but like Petty’s “Time To Move On” I applied it in a very different context. (I don’t know what there is with me and divorce songs!)
We buried Johnny (Stanley’s dad) this past Saturday. So it’s not even been a week. And I don’t want you to think that I trumped all this up in just a week. This has been brewing for years. I’ve been thinking, making notes, vetting and dissecting all this for going on 4 years! All the while not doing what I know now I should have.
Let me share the sad truth. It’s a truth that isn’t unique to me. It’s true for you, too.
We have failed to achieve the things we most want to achieve because we’re afraid. Who cares how illogical the fear is? It’s still real for us.
Listen, I’m closely associated with Leo Bottary who wrote the book, What Anyone Can Do. I’ve already told you that book was the result of a podcast Leo and I did, Year Of The Peer. We kept hearing stories of people who didn’t do extraordinary insanely super-human things. They were driven (and influenced by somebody who expressed belief in them). The title of Leo’s book comes from what a running coach said back in the 1970s about track champions. They mostly don’t do super-human things. They do the things most of us could do but don’t.
We fail to do the very things we could do. I had failed to do the things I could. The things I had claimed I wanted to do. Fear prevented me. Isolation helped fuel my fear. What helped me was finally seeing how intentional I had been in this personal part of my life. I had leaned heavily for over a year on four men, two of whom are now gone and one who is ready to go. And as I looked in retrospect it dawned on me, “What if you had no relied on them? What if these men had left the planet without you reaching out to them to help guide you through this?” What a loss! I couldn’t get my head wrapped around it.
Barney was 75, months away from turning 76. What if I had not confided in Barney about my challenge? What if I had not spent the hours on the phone (he lived in Ohio) getting his insights and fielding his hard questions?
Johnny was 88. Just days earlier he had celebrated that birthday. What if I had not leaned on him about my issue? What if we had not spent hours wrestling with the issue together? What if I had not gone to see him and spent a few hours with him (he lived in Oklahoma)?
Ronny is 83. I’ve spent the most time with him. He’s been my most trusted advisory. What if I had not had him in my life to see how he saw things? What if I had not been courageous enough to share my vulnerability with this most respected hero in my life? What if I had not spent hours and hours on the phone with him? What if I had not spent hours and hours in person seeking his input? He lives in Missouri.
Kevin is 46. I met him when he was 14. I’m well his senior, but he’s a close friend and like the other men, I love him very much.
The epiphany arrived. Finally.
I’m sitting there weeping at Johnny’s funeral and realizing that I had personally done what I had failed to do professionally. It was driven entirely by gratitude. Only weeks ago we celebrated Thanksgiving Day. I was overwhelmed with how thankful I felt for having these men in my life. And how thankful I was that I had formed relationships long ago with each of them. Mostly, thankful that I had such talented, insightful and caring men with whom I felt safe enough to share such important matters. It was so blindingly obvious how special and priceless these insights had been for me in my personal life.
“This is exactly why I want to get The Peer Advantage by Bula Network going,” I thought in the car ride back home. Of course, that was after a few hours of thinking, “I’m an idiot.”
No, I’m human. I’ve got the same fears and issues you do. I lost so much time because I was isolated while being surrounded by people. I didn’t lean on people as I should. It’s not their fault. It’s mine. I had intentionally put myself in the presence of people like Leo Bottary. But I didn’t want to bother people. I didn’t want to impose. Maybe I didn’t want to share my fears.
When I got back home I wrote down, “This is exactly why a paid peer advisory group is THE answer to better leverage the power of others. When we’re paying to be part of a safe group of peers we can more easily shed our fears and reservations of imposing on others. It’s the reason we’re paying to be part of the group – so we do exactly what we need to grow and advance our goals.”
It was a Homer Simpson DOH moment.
Look at your life. Look closely. Honestly.
Think about the fears that have long stood in your way. It doesn’t matter how reasonable or unreasonable they are. Or have been. They’re real because they’re yours.
What if some people had been gathered around you to help you through them? What difference would that have made?
Think about the lost time. Think about the lost advantages of having reached a goal that you’ve yet to reach.
Think about how much further up the road you’d be enjoying the achievements and success you’ve most wanted?
This isn’t a guarantee for success, but it’s absolutely the closest thing I know to it. It’s a sure-fire way to accelerate growth and your ability to figure it out.
Logically I’ve known all my adult life that it’s about making good decisions. It’s about finding out how we can make the very best decisions. Then, it’s about how can we execute those decisions? That’s it.
I don’t care what you want to accomplish. I don’t care what specific thing it is to which you aspire. The path forward is to make a good decision, then act on that decision. It’s how achievement happens in your life, my life and every other life.
Why don’t we do it better?
Because we’re afraid. Fear is the killer.
The antidote is the power of others. But that creates its own fear. Deep fear. Embarrassment. Looking stupid. Looking like we’re incompetent. Not wanting to be vulnerable. Not wanting to show our underwear even though we know everybody else feels just like we do.
We lose sight of the truth of our collective and common humanity.
Your Instagram moments feel real to me. So does my lack of Instagram moments. But you’re fronting. Hoping to fool most of the people into thinking you’re fearless. I get it. I’ve been doing the same thing, just not on Instagram. 😀
Friday the 13th, December 2019. The day of reckoning. The day I say, “Good-bye!”
First, good-bye to Grow Great, the podcast.
The podcast, starting in 2020, will be re-branded The Power Of Others. I’ve wrestled with other names, but that’s the one that best describes what I most want to do for the rest of my life. I want to evangelize the message that there’s enormous power in seeking and accepting help from others.
Everything will remain right here on this website. GrowGreat.com will still bring you right here. So will all these other names:
I didn’t want to rebrand the podcast The Peer Advantage because leveraging the power of others is bigger than peers. Look at my story of the four men I leaned on the past year or so. These men have been in my life a very long time and none of them is really my peer demographically. We all share faith. That’s our commonality so in that way we’re peers, but not in any other way.
Think about your life and the people who have heavily influenced you. It’s likely it may have been a boss. A parent. A grandparent. A co-worker. A spouse. A close friend. A teacher. There are lots of OTHERS out there who help us. And who can help us. I didn’t want to limit the podcast to just peers and I absolutely didn’t want the podcast to be some device to simply schill my work. And I wanted the podcast platform to be large enough to satisfy my curiosity for a long, long time. The Power Of Others will do that. I have no doubt.
Grow Great is under the business category. The Power Of Others will go into Society & Culture.
This my final episode of Grow Great. Starting in January each episode will be about the power of others. It will address whatever curiosities I have satisfied and the ones that remain. It will include business and organizational viewpoints. It’ll also include personal ones, too. It will include leadership, but it’ll also include elevating our game all along the way toward leadership if that’s something to which we aspire. It’ll take aim at leveraging the power of others no matter our circumstance or situation. Age and situations don’t matter — we all need others to help us along the way.
It’s not about promoting The Peer Advantage by Bula Network although I will shamelessly do that (but no more than I have in the past). It’s about influence and persuasion. Namely, convincing you and all of us, including myself, that we’re leaving so much potential behind. We’re wasting so much time. We can be further along in our success journey if we can find the courage to get past our fears. I hope to be just one voice evangelizing the message and helping show the way. Not because I’m an expert. Not because I’m a “thought leader,” but mostly because I care. And because I believe.
Professionally The Peer Advantage by Bula Network is going to get my attention and focus, finally at long last. No more consulting gigs. Any engagements I say YES to will be because it speaks to my desire to help companies and organizations (this includes city governments) with PEOPLE. If the issue isn’t directly related to PEOPLE, then my answer is, “No thanks!”
I’m doing some collaborations with people like Leo and Joe Bacigalupo who are also focused on people. But my focus is on my own company, Bula Network and driving the launch of my first group of The Peer Advantage. That charter group will consist of 8 (originally it was 7) SMB owners from around America. I’ve settled on and given formal invitations to just two so far. Quite a few others just didn’t feel right, which is fine. It’s not for everybody. For starters, it’s not for CEOs who aren’t owners. And for now, I’m not building a group for CEOs who aren’t owners. I may the next go-round, but not right now. It’s not for number 2’s. That too is an appealing idea and I’ve talked with lots of number 2’s, but this charter group is only for number 1’s. See, this has been just one of my problems in forming this first group. Distraction. Not being clear enough to say NO more quickly (albeit politely).
I went to 8 from 7 because I want to increase the value. The value proposition was already very high, but it was important to me to increase it even more for this charter group. And it was also important to me that the room have sufficient power to leverage the power of others to a level that’s as high as possible. Eight feels right on many fronts. First, it allows me to lower the cost to everybody in the group. That price reduction isn’t going to make a bit of difference in somebody saying YES, but it feels better for me. I didn’t do it for the members. I did it for myself. The members will benefit, too though. And I wanted to increase it by 1 because I know there may be times when not everybody can attend each meeting. It happens. We’re all busy. But I think over time the attendance will be near 100% every time. Even so, things can come up. With 8 I’ve convinced a majority of members showing up will provide sufficient feedback and insights to bring higher value to every single meeting.
I’m now diligently looking for 2 more charter members so we can begin. When we have half our members we’ll start meeting regularly. Monthly membership won’t begin until we have all 8 members at the table, but we’re going to get underway as soon as I get 2 more (four total). Those 4 will have paid their one-time enrollment fee, which is an important emotional tool more than anything. Yes, it’s the proverbial skin in the game and it’s non-refundable, but it’s such a ridiculously low sum of money it’s not going to make any broke or rich. What it will do is serve to overcome that fear I had – and that everybody has – to lean on others. It makes the group PROFESSIONAL. Yes, it will all be very personal, but the professional part is very important so we all feel comfortable and confident to bring whatever problems, challenges or opportunities to the group without any reservations.
So if you own a company doing in excess of a few million bucks a year I hope you’ll apply so we can discuss it. I only want you to have a company of that size because I don’t want the $800 monthly membership to be any kind of hardship whatsoever. My two members right now are over $50M each, pushing their way toward $100M. So don’t let the size or scale of your organization prevent us from talking. All the details are at ThePeerAdvantage.com.
So there it is. I feel better for having shared the gory details with you. It’s been a long, arduous journey to reach a place where I feel I have it figured out a bit better. I still have much to learn, but we’re in this together.
And when I think of what’s driving me mostly it’s significance and meaning. It’s impact. I believe each of us matters (as Angela Maiers is so fond of saying). And I believe each of us has a strong, innate desire to matter as much as we possibly can. Further, I believe we can achieve that best when are helping each other achieve those goals and ambitions that are so uniquely our own. It’s not about me deciding for you or you deciding for me. It’s about a mutual respect and care where I want you to achieve what you’ve set out to do and I need your help so I can hit my own targets.
The sign off won’t likely change because I’m rather fond of it. And along the way together we’ll figure out the things we’ve not yet figured out. I hope you’ll stay on the journey with me and I hope you’ll invite others…because it’s all about The Power Of Others.
This is going to help you because I’m going to pull the curtain back and walk you through why I changed the name and strategy of the podcast not that long ago…and why I’m now changing it again. First, let me tell you about my experience in completely changing – and I mean COMPLETELY CHANGING – my business.
Context provides understanding.
My context goes back to my entry into retailing. Specifically, consumer electronics retail. I walked into a local hi-fi store when I was in high school and asked for a sales job. I had no sales experience, but I loved the stereo gear because I loved music.
With no experience, but a lot of enthusiasm I got a job selling stereo equipment for straight commission. That meant I got no pay unless I sold something (illegal today, but this was the mid-70’s). I loved retailing, stereo gear, music, observing human behavior and performance-based pay (not necessarily in that order). 😉
By the time I was 25 I was leading a multi-million dollar company. By the time I was 50 I had almost 35 years of experience selling, merchandising, advertising, managing, leading and operating. It was time to pass on what experience had taught me. And to lean more into my passions of being a good operator and leader.
As a lifelong learner (and reader), I had been consumed with leadership, management, human behavior, psychology, consumer behavior, marketing and sales for as long as I could remember. I was still in high school when I first read of W. Edwards Deming, the man General Douglas MacArthur brought to Japan in 1951 to help with the census following World War II. Deming was a brilliant engineer and is largely responsible for helping Japan become the world power in manufacturing long before Korea and China came to power.
If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.
I was obsessed with improvement. My own and the companies I ran.
Books have always surrounded me. Business books. Self-help (now called Personal Development) books. Psychology or human behavior books. Marketing books. Sales books. Leadership books.
I’ve invested gobs of money in books, but I’ve invested even more time in reading them.
I’ve invested far more than Malcolm Gladwell’s proverbial 10,000 hours to watching human behavior, especially consumer behavior. And I’ve invested 7-8 times that many hours practicing the craft.
Trying things. Experimenting. Working hard to figure things out.
I didn’t always succeed. I failed plenty.
The failures were all me. The successes mostly the result of having good, sometimes great people, around me. But I figured a few things out along the way. Mostly, I figured myself out.
By the time I left the C-suite I was ready to do more significant work. Work that would be legacy work. I found myself using the phrase “passing it on” far too often. And I was slowly, but surely leaning more and more into who I really am – a communicator who thrives in helping people figure things out.
I’d long know I was different in many respects. Growing up I was envious of people who weren’t plagued with what I saw as a big burden. I was a noticer. Small details were inescapable. Subtle human behaviors stood out like a sore thumb for me. Things others didn’t seem to notice leapt out at me, refusing to be ignored. I could sense things with alarming accuracy. Simply by watching people’s facial expressions, body language, and vocal tone. It was ridiculously annoying growing up.
Empathy was a natural gift. Words, too. Compassion was easy and necessary. That simply meant my empathy drove compassion which is the fuel for doing something to help. To serve.
Sure, along the way I suffered being taken advantage of some. I suffered being disappointed in people and their foolish choices. But at every turn, I was naturally wired to figure out why they did what they did. To understand them.
According to the Myers-Briggs survey, I’m an INFJ, which basically means I’m introverted, highly intuitive, emotionally driven and discerning (judging). I appear like an extrovert much of the time, but I’m fueled by going deep with people – as deeply as they’re willing to go. INFJ personality types are often called COUNSELORS because there is something we emit – some signal or something others pick up – that lets them know we’re anxious to help. So people tend to easily lean on us for assistance. And speaking only for myself, I love it. I love being that guy.
Mostly, I love that people feel safe with me. And that people trust me. Keeping secrets isn’t hard for me. Forgiveness is easy. Bitterness is hard.
Now before you start thinking I’m all that and then some, I’ve got some serious flaws. For starters, I think I can help anybody in any situation. That’s ridiculous and I know (logically) it’s not true, but I still believe it and will die trying to help. I’m also an over communicator, which can drive family nuts I know. I enjoy understanding, which means I ask questions (lots of questions). I enjoy conveying what I’m feeling (but only to those with whom I feel the safest). And that necessarily means, at least for me, that it’s an extremely small number of people who really know me. Not because I’m unwilling to share or because I’m unwilling to be vulnerable, but because I’m unwilling to impose, which is how it feels.
It’s been long said of INFJ personality types that we counsel others, but find it hard to accept help ourselves. And that’s truer than you may know. Accepting help is very difficult because it’s a role reversal I’m not used to.
When I left leading multi-million dollar companies I set about to help business owners and leaders tackle their problems. I was a lifelong operator. An expert in human behavior. A guy with mad dog people skills – those soft skills. But I had no experience in “professional services” like executive or CEO coaching.
For the past 10 years or so I’ve experienced success and failure along the way diving deeply into the problems of CEOs and top-level leaders. What began as “roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty” consulting morphed more into coaching. I hated consulting. I loved coaching.
Consulting is “I’ll do it for you.”
Coaching is “Here, let’s help you figure out how to do it yourself.”
True confession – there was something I absolutely hated. With a passion.
Getting clients.
Not because I hated selling or because I wasn’t very good at it. Quite the contrary.
It was because I was selling ME. It was way too personal. It felt way too nasty. Too much self-promotion (something that is insanely difficult for me). In a world filled with thought-leaders I found myself saying to people (quite seriously, I might add), “I’m struggling to lead my own thoughts so I’m in no position to lead yours.” Yes, it was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it was more real than people understood. I meant it. I still mean it.
Along the way, I rubbed shoulders with authors, speakers, experts and self-proclaimed “thought leaders.” Sometimes I envied them. Mostly I didn’t feel at home around them. They just weren’t “my people.”
I was trying to learn from them – trying hard to figure out what the most successful among them had figured out. Namely, how to grow and build a successful enterprise so more people could be served. At at every turn it was growing increasingly more obvious, it wasn’t my natural wiring to promote the way I needed to. To exude the confidence and bravado that the world pays attention to – and that the world positively responds to.
Simultaneously I was finding success just being true to who I was. I’ve landed as many clients as not by sitting down with them in the first meeting, listening to what they most want to accomplish and figuring out that I’m not likely the best option for them – and telling them so.
“I’m probably not the best option to address the specifics of what you seem to want,” I’ll say. And I’ll even go on, “I’m not using a ploy to get you to want to hire me. I genuinely think you may find somebody with experience in your space who can better serve you.”
They’ll often look at me and I know the look. It’s the look, “I want to hire YOU.” It makes me feel good but puts tremendous pressure for me to over-deliver (something I’m naturally wired to do anyway). I take every engagement very personally and give it my all. It’s the only way I know to operate. I get fully invested in the people I serve.
Which is great.
Until the engagement ends. And then I’m wrecked for a period of time because it feels like the loss of a close relationship. People who have shared their deepest, darkest fears and challenges. People who found me safe. People who trusted me completely. Then we say good-bye after 6 months. Or three years.
I maintain contact with at least 80% of everybody I’ve ever served. It may be a random text message, “Just checking in on you. Hope all is well.” Or it may be a lunch where we break bread together and catch up. I don’t know any other way to be.
Four years ago I was given an epiphany. I’m being big and bold calling it an “epiphany.” It was more like a moment of enlightenment. I became aware of something I didn’t know about. Not fully.
Peer advisory groups. Professional peer advisory groups.
It instantly made sense to me. Join yourself to others who share one big thing in common – in this sense, everybody is an entrepreneur or CEO. No matter that everybody is running a company that may be very different from the others in the group. The common denominator is running a business. That provides instant understanding. Everybody knows what it is to meet payroll, generate revenues, handle HR issues, serve customers and all the other things involved in operating a profitable business.
The power is in the difference though. The various experiences and insights that each person brings to the table provide more perspectives than anybody could have alone.
I’ve seen enough shows on the ID channel to have some understanding of the searing pain parents suffer at such dreadful news. But I can’t possibly understand it. Not really. Because it hasn’t happened to me. I instantly thought, “What better place could there be for parents in that situation?” I mean, you walk into a meeting, introduce yourself and that’s all that’s required. Everybody in the room is just like you. They know your pain. It’s an instant bond and trust.
But…
The power is in the differences. Some are further up the trail in having dealt with their pain. Some are wired very differently than you. Everybody is coming from their own unique experience and place in life. Yet, they all know the pain of losing a child to murder.
A single tie binds them. The differences are where the power is to get through it.
It made sense to me. Truth is, it has made sense to anybody who will listen to it. It universally makes sense.
That led to leveraging some information made more clearly known to me by a book, The Knowing-Doing Gap by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton (2000). The book focuses on companies closing the gap between what they know and what they do. The authors argue that quite often we know enough. We just don’t do enough. It’s equally true of individuals.
You likely already know enough. You’re not likely doing everything you already know to do.
As I dove more deeply into the whole peer advisory advantage – people surrounding themselves with others who are like them in some way (for me it was either everybody is a CEO or business owner) – I knew it was work I was meant to do. How to make the transition wasn’t something I understood. Yet.
“Everything is hard until it’s easy.”
We each hold personal truths. They’re not empirical truths. In other words, they form our reality, but they may not all be real. We just think they are. And we behave as though they are. These personal truths drive our behavior. Empirical truths don’t.
Mostly we chase more information. I’m not prone to data overload. I don’t go seeking more information before reaching a conclusion. Yet I lean heavily toward evidence because my intuition is so high I want to do my best to make sure I’m seeing it as it really is. If the decision is important (which just means the stakes are higher), then I look for more evidence that I’m seeing things correctly. If the stakes are low (which just means the stakes aren’t high at all), then I’m comfortable and confident leaning more on my intuition.
I’d been coaching individual people or small groups. The work had been personal, intimate and always within the context of their challenges, opportunities, and experiences. In every case, there was also another important element – internal politics. In some engagements, the politics were so enormous they impacted every decision made by individuals or the teams. In every engagement, the coaching sessions had to take into account politics. It’s just how the work went.
I had not analyzed this. I just accepted it.
Working to get myself up to speed on peer advisory groups was opening my eyes to some existing things that weren’t working for me personally. I was growing increasingly unhappy because I was having to regulate myself more and more. And I didn’t like it.
For example, candid conversations are easy for me. I relish them. They work. Beating around the proverbial bush, talking in riddles, making clear things mysterious is a surefire recipe for poor performance, unhappy and disengaged people. But I’d often find myself surrounded by that kind of behavior. In some cases leaders were quite committed to that effort, wanting me to “change” their people when in reality THEY were the problem.
I lost myself somewhere along the way.
Never one to sell out, every engagement took a large part of who I am and eroded it. Some much more than others. Sitting down with people helping them gave me energy. Dealing the politics knowing they were in a circumstance where so many other things beyond performance had to be considered — sucked the life right out of me.
Leo and I became fast friends and I began to learn. And learn some more. And learn some more.
Along the way, I decided it was time to push all my chips into the middle of the table and bet the farm on becoming a leader of peer groups. That prompted the birth of an idea, The Peer Advantage.
Twice – that’s right, TWICE – I’ve made a shift in this podcast by renaming it The Peer Advantage podcast. Thought was, become the podcast with that focus. The first time I did it without much thought. The second time I did it with lots of forethought. That was recently, within the last few months.
It was a mistake both times. I wasn’t doing what I knew to do. Instead, I began to do what I knew I likely shouldn’t do, but I was desperate to make this shift or change in my life’s work.
“What do you want to be known for?” I had asked myself. Not in some vanity sense, but in a marketing or business sense. My answer was, “I want to run at least two online peer groups serving business leaders.” The answer was far less focused on identity as it was on what I most wanted to DO. Truth was, I simply didn’t want to be restricted to worry about helping navigate the politics inside their organizations. Instead, I wanted to help top-level leaders – the ones mostly responsible for the politics (and culture) – to forge ahead in building, growing and sustaining a high performing organization. The only way to do that is to help the person at the top.
That insight is important because it make the change of this podcast to The Peer Advantage even more idiotic. Bad move. Failure. Why? Quite simply because more than 99% of top-level leaders have any experience with professional peer advisory groups. Almost nobody has experienced them. Almost nobody understands the true value of being surrounded by other CEOs or entrepreneurs. And many others, who still don’t understand them, think they’re something they’re not. Some think they’re networking groups where entrepreneur exchange business. Some sort of “you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours” deal. Some think they’re “good ‘ol boys” clubs where people get together to just shoot the breeze. Almost nobody I’ve encountered in the last few years to engage in conversations about the power of peers understand it in a professional context.
I’m empathetic about all this, but it was puzzling because almost everybody gets the power of peers when it comes to kids. We all seem to fully understand the impact our friends had on us when we were young. And those of us who are parents or grandparents understand how important it is that our kids run with the right group. We care about who our kids choose as friends.
We don’t seem to understand how that same exact power is present in our lives as adults. That’s important because it’s what drove me to make the change in this podcast, a change that I repeat – was a failure and the wrong move. I knew what to do, but instead of doing it…I did something different. I didn’t’ think clearly. And I got impatient. That’s a big part of my failure.
I reached out to a couple of podcasting buddies who have vast knowledge of this medium and how it all works. Not just from a technical viewpoint, but from a marketing and building an audience standpoint. One responded right away, but the other one didn’t respond at all. I thought nothing of it. Rather than move forward with my plan to have these guys question me, challenge me and help me figure this out – I just dove in to do what I felt I should do. I made the change and immediately felt like it wasn’t right. But I leaned into it anyway. I’m not afraid to try something, but I wanted to get it right. I failed.
Some weeks went by and I heard from the buddy who hadn’t responded. He was up for the challenge. But by then I was multiple episodes into the change. Too late. I hadn’t given enough breath to the process. Instead, I had dug in and made a move that likely could have been prevented – a failure that I could have avoided if I would have relied on these two trusted friends. Friends who understand me, podcasting and my context. But I ignored it. Trudged forward even though at some level I know what to do, and they could have helped me.
The emperor has no clothes.
Here I was embarking on making major shifts in my business and this podcast. Aiming to help people learn how to leverage the power of others. And I was forced to face the reality that I wasn’t doing the very thing I was preaching. I was completely hypocritical. Trying to go it alone when I had two buddies willing to help me.
The lesson for you is no different. We’re driven to do things. Make things happen. Patience isn’t likely our strong suit. We’re driven to get things done. Accomplish something.
I could have avoided confusion, failure and feeling crappy about myself if I had leveraged the power of others. These guys were willing to serve me simply because I had asked. That’s the kind of guys they are. It’s the kind of relationship we have. I’ll go you one better — I told them both that I’d like to record it because I felt the conversation might benefit other podcasters fretting about changing their business or their podcast. It was a good idea. A really good idea. But I blew it. Ripped it to shreds without much thought because I got antsy.
After some weeks of thinking, “I shouldn’t have done this” I just stopped. One day I got up and decided I’m going back to Grow Great. Classic case of neglecting to do what I knew I should and an even more classic case of making a decision without the insights of others fully capable and willing to help me. Guilty of preaching one message and doing something completely contrary to it. #DOH
There are likely so many things in your life as a leader that you already know to do, but you’re not doing them. Let me encourage you to get in touch with those things. Sit down and think more soberly about what those things are.
Here are some things that might help.
Write down the top 3 things that are putting pressure on you today. Put them in order of importance.
Focus on the top one. Is there one thing you feel very confident about doing with regard to that one issue — but you’re not doing it? It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small. Just one thing that you’re thinking you should do. It would be something as innocuous as calling a meeting to discuss it with people who could likely influence a better decision. It would be something more concrete like an important decision to take some action. Narrow your attention on the one thing you could do next.
Do that one thing. Call that meeting. Make that decision. Do whatever it is that might move you forward.
Measure the impact. How did it work out? Does it feel right? Is it working out favorably? Get a grip on whether it’s working or not. Does it need more time?
Get feedback from people who can help. This is important – and something I neglected to do. I skipped this step. Truth is I skipped many of these steps and created confusion and chaos that could have been avoided. But I got impatient and stupid. Huddle with people who can provide valuable insight so you better understand the adjustments you should make.
Take action based on whatever commitment you made to yourself based on the feedback.
Lean on the people who provided the feedback to help you become or remain accountable for what you decided. You owe it to yourself. It’s less about what you owe the people who helped you. You owe it to your own forward progress and success.
Keep doing this so you develop better habits of focusing on the important things – those critical decisions you must make – and on leaning on others to help you do it better. Exercise these steps on those number 2 and number 3 things on your list of things that are putting pressure on you today. Don’t neglect them, but don’t commingle them with the top priority. It doesn’t mean you can’t tackle three things at once (you do that all the time and it’s often necessary). Do each item as you need to. They may or may not influence each other. That’s for you to decide.
You WILL figure it out. Others can help accelerate that. And make it more effective and impactful. Stop behaving like a hermit with all the answers. Save yourself the time, embarrassment and failure that can often accompany stubbornness.
I’ve made a commitment. To myself.
I’m going to lean on people I trust. Period.
It’s at the heart of the work I most want to do. Work that I think provides some of the highest value the planet has ever known – the power of others!
The Peer Advantage by Bula Network is now enrolling charter members. Today’s show is a brief outline of why you may want to consider applying today.
This is a paid, professional peer advantage group (a mastermind group, if you please) where we collectively work to help each other grow our business, our leadership and our lives.
The objective is to help each member hit the trifecta of successful business building:
Getting new customers
Serving existing customers better
Not going crazy in the process
L.U.G.
It’s all about doing the work to help ourselves Learn, Understand and Grow.
What provoked your interest to launch a peer advisory group for small business owners?
I was not yet 30 when I began to distill building a business into 3 buckets of activities. Gambling isn’t something I do. For decades I attended CES (Consumer Electronic Show) because I was in the business. It’s in Vegas. And I’ve never placed a single wager. But I did know enough about betting to know that a trifecta is a bet in which the person betting forecasts the first three finishers in a race in the correct order. It’s also defined as “a run of three wins or grand events.” By the time I was approaching 40 I knew the 3 buckets were a trifecta of successful business building. More appropriately, these 3 activities represented hitting the trifecta of business building:
Getting new customers
Serving existing customers better
Not going crazy in the process
Experience taught me that the first one could be insanely hard, and the second one equally so…but that third one seemed the most difficult of all.
Mental health, especially among small business owners, wasn’t discussed much just a few years ago. It’s gaining more traction, but it still doesn’t get nearly enough attention. But that third leg of the trifecta – when I came up with it – wasn’t aimed at proper mental health or illness. It was far more everyday language expressing the daily frustrations that every entrepreneur fully understands.
I’ve always been an “I wonder if we can” kind of a guy. Maybe I bore easily. Maybe I just think there’s got to be a better way (I catch myself saying that often). Improvement – well, the quest for improvement – is a constant pursuit. It seems a far more exciting way to roll than to be complacent.
A decade ago, after over 3 decades of running businesses with lots of employees, inventory, trucks and hard assets I stepped away to begin serving CEOs, business owners, executives and leaders. The trifecta was almost always in play (city government and non-profits being the exceptions). In every “for profit” enterprise, the trifecta was ALWAYS the needed focal point. Everybody I encountered – and still encounter – was woefully challenged by one or more of the three. Mostly, that third one was universally difficult.
That’s what led to an epiphany brought about when a client was invited to check out a professional peer advisory group of CEOs. I was invited to consider running such a group. Up to that point, it was never on my radar.
Sure I had read Napoleon Hill’s book, Think And Grow Rich, when I was a teenager. It was the introduction of a mastermind group for most of us. But I never gave it much more thought.
Enter the Internet and I began to be invited to a few. I gave a few of them a shot, but they were utter failures because I had nothing in common with the people inside. The conversations weren’t deep or meaningful. Mostly, people were just looking to promote themselves or network. I never participated in more than 2 sessions, ever.
I was serving CEOs and top-level leaders. I knew how lonely their work was. Been there, done that.
I also knew how valuable my work was to them. Serving them was as rewarding as any work I had ever done. And I’m not young so that’s saying something! 😀
I started thinking more deeply about my own life. And the people who surrounded me.
About this time a book was published entitled, The Power Of Peers. It was written by Leon Shapiro and Leo Bottary. I started looking online for interviews with the authors. Especially video or audio interviews. I didn’t find hardly any, but one day I stumbled on one with Leo Bottary.
I read the book. I re-read the book. I began researching group learning, the power of collectives and many thing associated with how people can help each other through formal, confidential groups designed to help each person learn, understand and grow.
I decided to contact Leo Bottary. We ended up forming a close friendship and launching a podcast together. This was about 3 years ago.
I was growing increasingly interested in the power of peer groups, especially for CEOs or business owners. But I couldn’t find hardly any CEOs or business owners who had ever experienced it. It wasn’t that surprising because I had operated businesses for decades without any awareness of it myself.
I was investing in my own learning, understanding and growing — all with regards to Leo’s tagline, “Who you surround yourself with matters!” I had raised kids and now had grandkids so I knew it was positively true. Every parent knows it. That’s why we concern ourselves with who our kids have as friends.
I have a few superpowers. Many weaknesses, but thankfully they may be offset by the superpowers. Empathy. Compassion. Forgiveness. Communication. Problem-solving. These are the strengths of my character. I didn’t feel like I was fully utilizing them. And I was growing increasingly unhappy in my work even though clients were happy.
I sat down to quietly think about what was going on and what I should do.
I wasn’t being true to who I mostly was, and who I mostly wanted to be. It was manifested in that I wasn’t serving the people I most wanted to serve – small business owners. People love name brand clients. People love big fish. I get it. I had succumbed to it myself in serving and pursuing CEOs of bigger companies. Hired guns everyone. Nothing wrong with that, but they weren’t “my people.”
One day while sitting in my kitchen alone I did something weird. I put a digital audio recorder on the counter, turned it on RECORD, then sat at the counter on a stool to conduct a coaching session with myself.
For the next 2 hours, I did for myself exactly what I do with clients. I asked tough questions that would provoke deeper thoughts. My tone of voice asking the questions was different than my tone answering them. In fact, later when I listened to the recording it almost (not quite) sounded like two different people in the conversation.
I also made notes just as I would in a real coaching session.
From that session emerged the truth. I mostly resonated with small business owners. They were my people, the people I was most drawn to help. But I wasn’t serving them.
Another truth emerged. I’m an introvert who abhors showing off. I respect those who do (and can), but it’s not me. I enjoy being behind the scenes, pushing others more and more into the spotlight. But I was podcasting and that filled my need for communication – candid communication. Promoting myself wasn’t comfortable.
More introversion truths emerged. If given the choice between entering two rooms – one filled with 300 people and one filled with 6 – I’d opt for the smaller room where I could enjoy deeper conversations and get to know people well. I crave deep conversations where I can truly get to know people. Small talk empties my tank faster than anything I know.
Groups matter. My deep belief in the power of the collective also emerged. I had experiences in group learning but had failed to translate that experience into the realm of business.
Leo urged me. Pushed me. Encouraged me to launch a group. He could see how ideally suited I was for the work.
A decision was made and one thing after another got in my way. At first I felt snake bitten. Then I began to wonder if I was self-sabotaging things. With outside help, I realized neither was true. Life was happening and I was going it alone instead of reaching out for help (that’s a personal hazard I suffer because my strength is to SERVE…it bites me in the butt because I find it hard to accept help, not because I don’t value it, but because I don’t want to impose on others…I know they have troubles of their own).
A few months ago I backed my ears and went forth. Slowly at first. But mentally and emotionally I had made my bet by going ALL IN on The Peer Advantage.
I started mentioning it in the podcast. Consistently. And I began to attract interested small business owners. As I transition to full-time commitment ONLY to THE PEER ADVANTAGE I find myself looking forward to the transition away from everything else.
I told somebody the other day that I long to wake up in the morning with just the members of THE PEER ADVANTAGE on my mind as the people who I’ll serve. To focus that intently on a group of people and their businesses, and their lives…that energizes me. Just the thought of it elevates my energy.
So I’m pushing harder and harder to get this first group launched. Four charter members will start because I want to rely on input from them to fill the remaining 3 seats. Not in a recruitment fashion, but in the figuring out who (what type of people and what industries) we want at the table.
This is going to be life-changing for members.
I guarantee it.
The Bottom Line Investment
2 hours every other week (hard start/hard stop) – 4 hours a month
Virtual meetings online via mobile, laptop, desktop or tablet (convenience is key)
On-demand digital learning/workshops/webinars (driven by members’ curiosity)
A monthly hour long 1-on-1 coaching session online with me. Additional sessions are available to members at a greatly reduced price.
$1,299 one-time enrollment fee (non-refundable)
$2,697 quarterly membership subscription**100% Money Back Guarantee
Lifetime Price Protection for charter members (membership subscription will never increase based on continuous membership)
**100% Money Back Guarantee – if you’re unhappy at any point during the first 90 days you can get a full refund on the membership subscription
Be well. Do good. Grow great! And if you’re a US-based small business owner hit that APPLY NOW button and let’s get this thing going.
The line came from a bit of dialogue in a 2009 movie featuring George Clooney, The Men Who Stare At Goats. Clooney plays Lyn Cassady. Bob is a reporter friend inquiring about Lyn’s life.
Lyn Cassady: Once you understand the linkage between observation and reality then you begin to dance with invisibility.
Bob Wilton: Like camouflage.
Lyn Cassady: No, it’s not like camouflage.
Lyn was part of a secret military psychological and paranormal unit. He claimed to be a Jedi, a superpower soldier with extraordinary mental capabilities. It wasn’t that great a movie, but it did have a few laugh out loud moments.
Lyn uttered the line in reference to his ability to become invisible. This would clearly be a good thing. A positive tool for any soldier.
I’m using the line in reference to our ability to not be noticed. To be virtually – not literally – invisible. Nobody notices. Especially during times when we could most use some noticing. Times when we could use some help. I’m using it as something negative. Something to be avoided or remedied.
My two-word solution is, “Get involved.” But that’s not deep enough. It’s just a headline to render a quick meaning to “do something about your loneliness or invisibility.”
The burdens of leadership are lonely. And I don’t mean power, authority or being in charge. People become intoxicated with those things. Nobody (at least intentionally) gets drunk on loneliness. They might go mad, but drunk? Doubtful. Loneliness can put the best of us in a quick funk.
The loneliness of true leadership – the constant serving of others (which is the name of the game) – is a side disadvantage. To be fair, the advantages of serving others is vast, broad and deep…filled with tons of rewards found nowhere else for the person bent to do the work. The focus is always on somebody else. At least when leadership is done well. It’s selfless. Intentionally so.
The leader is not invisible. Rather, she’s in the forefront when others need help. She’s first in line to get the call or text because others trust her. They’re comfortable leaning on her.
The leader isn’t invisible because he’s top of mind during trouble. When people find themselves in unchartered water they quickly contact the person with whom they feel most safe and able to help.
Genuine leadership derives energy from service. Concentrating on others is the work and leaders would have it no other way.
But…
To whom does the leader go? When he’s in need, who does she text or call?
To whom can the leader shell it all down with and feel safe? To whom can the leader confide without fear of judgment or betrayal?
Who can relate to the leader’s plight of invisibility – those times when the leader needs to focus a bit more on himself?
So few leaders have an intentional plan for such occasions. Mostly because they have nobody to whom they can safely go. And if safety isn’t the issue (like a close friend or family member), then relatability is the issue. It’s why husbands or wives in leadership often find it tough to connect and communicate with their spouse about work-related issues. Context and language matter…and it’s a hard thing to accomplish with people who have little or no idea what we may be up against.
One solution is to surround yourself with people to whom you’ll never be invisible. People who will be involved with you and people to whom you can be involved. Peers.
According to research done by my friend Leo Bottary (co-author of the book, The Power Of Peers), there are 5 factors that bring about the peer advantage.
Select The Right Peers
A peer group is smarter than any one individual.
Leaders benefit from insightful questions and the impartial advice of their peers.
People prefer to implement their own solutions, rather than be told what to do and how to do it.
Success is the most effective means of driving positive behavior changes.
Leaders, regardless of industry sector, share common aspirations and challenges.
Leaders benefit from learning about industry practices not common to their own business.
Peer accountability is a powerful force.
Create A Safe Environment
Being vulnerable is liberating.
When you can share anything, knowing you won’t be judged, it’s a powerful force to help you grow.
A healthy respect for confidentiality is mandatory. What happens in a group, stays in the group. It’s not negotiable.
Vulnerability is seen as a strength, not a weakness.
Creativity and change are fueled by our willingness to be open.
Utilize A Smart Guide
True smart guides lead with the hand of a servant.
They listen, ask good questions, build camaraderie, consider themselves as coaches rather than consultants and wear their passion for the role on their sleeve.
The smart guide is part of the group and every member of the group has their back.
They reinforce group norms, create an atmosphere of learning and have fun – all at the same time.
Foster Valuable Interaction
Confidentiality is key. That safe environment fosters more open interactions.
Skilled, repeated interactions create close bonds among group members who share in the joys of repeated successes.
The use of a highly strategic and structured approach fosters more skilled discussions.
It involves properly framing the issue, asking questions informed by experience and leveraging the power of a collection of successful business owners.
It provides an unparalleled opportunity for personal and professional development of every member.
Be Accountable
Accountability is where peer advantage comes to life.
It’s where the outcomes and takeaways each business owner realizes manifest themselves both personally and professionally.
It’s the whole point — to grow. To improve. To be more effective.
The difference between peer influence and peer advantage is that peer influence is an individual pursuit while peer advantage is a group endeavor powered by greater selectivity, targeted strategies for achieving goals and structured engagement that inspires lasting results.
These 5 factors are part of The Peer Advantage by Bula Network. This is my solution to help you avoid the dance with invisibility. It’s just one answer for 7 U.S.-based entrepreneurs. I’m currently accepting applications at ThePeerAdvantage.com.
This life-changing opportunity will provide 7 small business owners the opportunity to fix their loneliness once and for all. To surround themselves with other owners who will help them learn, understand and grow. I invite you to complete the application today. It’ll only take you a few minutes. Once I get your application, I’ll reach out so we can schedule a phone call. That phone call isn’t a sales pitch of any kind. Rather, it’s a time for me to learn more about you and your business – and an opportunity for you to learn whatever you’d like about me and The Peer Advantage by Bula Network.
We’ve just completed week 1 of Q2. Don’t put it off. It’s time to leverage the power you can gain in surrounding yourself with people fully capable of helping you grow your business, your leadership and your life. Go to ThePeerAdvantage.com right now and complete the application.
It’s here. The last day of the year for the GROW GREAT PODCAST. I hope you’ve found this 5-day journey a profitable way to end the year. I knew of no more powerful way to end the year.
You’re now in the Grand Ballroom of Abundance. You were outside with the masses who lamented all the bad things that happen to them. Pessimism and despair rule their lives. Until you entered the room, you didn’t know there was another way to live. You just supposed you were not among the anointed lucky people who achieve great things. You now know you were wrong.
One of the most important things you learned in this journey is that entrance into the room has NO prerequisites. You wrongly thought you needed permission, some personal invitation to enter. Mostly, you thought you needed to achieve something first, then you’d be allowed inside. Until you started to talking to people who all shared with you the same truth – high achievement happens only once you’re inside the Grand Ballroom of Abundance. It was a big epiphany for you…something you wish you’d known much earlier.
There’s no time to waste.
The Grand Ballroom of Abundance doesn’t care who you are or where you came from. Mostly because everybody inside came in from outside at some point. History is important because every citizen in the room has a context largely determined by their past, but they all realize life happens in the present and future.
Some walked into this room when they were young. Others were old. Some are highly educated. Others never made it past elementary school. There are engineers and scientists and salespeople and clerks. Men, women. People from wealthy families and people who don’t even know who their biological families are. The Grand Ballroom of Abundance respects everybody, discriminates against nobody inside. Nobody INSIDE.
There is only discrimination against people outside. Those folks who refuse to enter. The ones who want to beckon people inside to leave. The Ballroom has no tolerance for them because those people are the enemies of high growth and high achievement. The discrimination isn’t based on anything else.
Now it’s time to get busy. It’s urgent for you to start doing the work as soon as possible because there’s no time to waste. You’re on a new clock now. The past is the past. You’re thankful for what you learned in the past. You’re thankful for everything. You came to understand the Ballroom when you did, and you’re good with it. Now that you’re inside you realize there’s no time to waste wishing you’d found your way inside sooner. That won’t accomplish anything and you know it. Now it’s time to focus on the very reason you wanted to figure out how to get in here – to grow great!
It’s time to GROW GREAT.
The fun begins now. Creativity. Innovation. Improvement. These are now daily activities where you spend all your time. The room will help. It’s an environment that favors growth. The Grand Ballroom of Abundance fosters everything you’ve longed for. Growth and expansion happen because you’re now where you belong AND you’re committed to the work. Both are necessary. For the first time in your life, you have both properly aligned.
The voices and the pull of the outside world is never going to leave you alone. Never.
The abundance they seek is company. They want more people willing to chime in and be negative. Daily you have to make the choice to remain devoted to the abundance of high growth. More and more you have to lower the volume of the distracting voices. Eliminate the ones you can. Suppress the rest. Then turn up the volume of the solid citizens in the room, the ones who help you, encourage you and support your visions.
The Power Of Peers
Peer pressure is a good thing. You’re feeling it. The collective inside the room wants you to stay here, and achieve what you most desire. They don’t want you to fail. They know that doesn’t help you, or anybody else. Or the room. Everybody benefits when you do well. When you’re achieving the things you’re capable of, the room expands. Opportunities do, too. It’s just how this ecosystem works. You all know it.
There’s now a positive pressure to stay here inside this Grand Ballroom of Abundance. And you don’t want to leave. You don’t want to disappoint yourself. Or the collective in the room. It’s a feeling you’ve never had before and you don’t ever want to lose it.
People care. They’re willing to help. They won’t put up with your bull or excuses because they know how destructive that is to the Abundance. It’s not because they’re picking on you. It’s because they care about high growth and achievement. The collective is devoted – individually and together – to eliminating the destructive forces of pessimism and excuse-making. Here in this room challenges are meant to be overcome if possible. Endured if not. Opportunities are meant to be seized. And created. You love this way of life and you never want to go back now that you’ve tasted it.
The Key To Staying In The Room Is OTHERS
I owe you one final secret. A secret the most solid citizens in the room know. It’s not really a secret, but too many people fail to see it for the power it really is.
People. The power is in people. Your associations’ matter. Now it’s time to make sure you’re very intentional and purposeful about the people who surround you. Nothing will elevate your growth and protect you from leaving this room more. Nothing.
A big driver for your own high growth and achievement is your ability to improve the people around you. Remember, nobody in the room discriminates against others inside the room, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have preferences. They all have preferences. The super achievers in the room seek out other super achievers, or those they think are working hard to become super achievers.
The room isn’t cliquish, but it can seem like it. Only because birds of a feather are flocking together. The door you walked through to get inside this room is gone, but now inside the room, there may seem to be some invisible walls. You’re going to have to resist your old way of thinking, feeling like you need permission to join this group or that group. You don’t need permission. You simply need to make up your mind you want to join the group, but – and it’s a big but – you must be committed to the work necessary to join some particular group inside the room. Some groups are super achievers and they’ll hold you to an even higher standard. But that’s great. I encourage you to seek such peer pressure.
Well, that about does it. 2018 is a wrap here at the GROW GREAT PODCAST. Lord willing 2019 is going to be our greatest year ever. There are some exciting things happening around here. Leo Bottaryand I have some big plans to deliver superior results to companies who want to really move the needle in building high growth cultures and employee engagement. The Peer Advantage by Bula Network is my effort to build just 2 groups of seven entrepreneurs in each group – peer advantage groups who will do for each other everything I’ve described today. Lord willing, we’ll put in the work, grow and achieve big results.
Permit me to end with one favor. Let me know how it’s going for you. I want to hear from you. I’m not fishing for compliments, but if the GROW GREAT PODCAST has provided value, let me know how. More importantly, let me know how I can grow greater. How can this podcast provide even more value? Use the contact page and let me know. I’d like to hear from many of you. I’ll take the holiday break to listen and refine things so 2019 will be even better.
Thank you for giving me your time and attention. You’re very important.
Be well. Do good. Grow great! And have a safe, happy holiday season. Lord willing, I’ll talk to you next year as we get another year of Grow Great underway.
Entrepreneurs, business owners – Bula Network is proud to be launching THE PEER ADVANTAGE, a professional peer advisory group exclusively for U.S.-based business owners. We’re now just 23 days away from 2019, a year I’m dubbing, “The year of intentional and purposeful connections.”
Bula Network began almost 10 years ago as mostly a consulting company helping clients with a variety of different business challenges. I leveraged my decades of business building experience to help business owners and CEOs with everything from marketing, to succession planning, to sales force compensation programs and just about everything in between.
Eventually, the work took a turn – mostly because I wanted to stop doing the work for people and instead I wanted to help them figure out ways to do the work themselves. I went from fishing for clients to teaching clients how to fish for themselves. It was much more rewarding work. Some call it coaching.
Three years ago another shift occurred, one that was very congruent with coaching. I became aware of the professional peer advisory group for CEOs and entrepreneurs. Fascinating stuff. By the Spring of 2016 a book was released, THE POWER OF PEERS. It was written by Vistage CEO Leon Shapiro and Vistage VP Leo Bottary. Vistage is a company that specializes in building 16 member in-person groups for CEOs and top leaders. The book captured both my attention and imagination.
By the early fall of 2016 Leo had left Vistage to do his own thing. He was the VP of Peer Advantage at Vistage and clearly one of the chief experts in the world on the topic. As a longtime podcaster I had an idea. I wondered if Leo would like to have his own podcast. Me? I wanted to learn more. I’d be willing to do the heavy lifting to make a podcast possible if Leo was interested in using such a platform to spread the message.
I contacted Leo even though I’d never met him and he had no clue who I was. After a few back and forth conversations Leo agreed to launch the podcast, YEAR OF THE PEER (2017). I was merely the behind-the-scenes guy doing the voiceover work and serving as producer. There were many world-class interviews with fascinating people. At some point in the midst of it all, Leo knew there was a book brewing, based in part on what we were learning on the podcast. Leo began to work on a book.
By August 2017 Leo asked me to co-host the podcast with him beginning this year. We based the podcast on the book he was writing and used the same title he intended to use for the book – WHAT ANYONE CAN DO. In January we launched the new podcast.
What Anyone Can Do (the book) was published this fall (2018). More importantly for me, Leo and I had become friends and co-workers on the podcast. I had been learning as much as possible about the peer advantage, especially the advantage to small business owners who would intentionally and purposefully surround themselves with other entrepreneurs interested in hitting the trifecta of business building: getting new customers, serving existing customers better and not going crazy in the process!
I wanted to enter the space. Leo encouraged me. He had worked with me for quite a while now and knew my skillset. He felt I was ideally suited for the work because I’m driven to help people without telling them what to do, because empathy is one of my few superpowers and because I thrive on deep connections.
In February this year (2018) I told Leo I wanted to launch a small group of just 7 business owners (the people who are the closest people to my heart). I laid out the details that I intended to launch a virtual group where we’d meet online using a video conferencing platform like Zoom where members could join using their mobile phone, tablet, laptop or desktop. We’d meet every other week for 2 hours and hit the ground running with a hard start time and a hard stop time. In between meetings we could communicate using some other technologies. Additionally, I wanted to invite friends and acquaintances with specialty knowledge to conduct live and recorded webinars for the group (content they could consume at their leisure).
Leo is responsible for immediately telling me to launch two groups – one for the morning and one for late afternoon. Because (as he reasoned), “Some people are morning people and some aren’t.” That’s the power of surrounding yourself with people who will challenge you and push you.
I spent the rest of the year trying hard to get things lined up so I could go “all in” on launching The Peer Advantage by Bula Network. Somewhere along the way I was even able to snag the url, ThePeerAdvantage.com.
So I’m inviting you to check it out and apply. I’m going to launch it after the first of the year. You can apply by going to BulaNetwork.com/apply. It’s a Google form that will only take you a few minutes to share enough information with me so we can have a meaningful conversation. Complete the form and then we’ll schedule a quick phone call so I can find out more about you, and answer any questions you may have.
The Unique Power Of Intentional & Purposeful Connection
Before I go today, let me tell you a quick story to help you better understand the power of joining a professional peer group if you’re a business owner.
You’ve got people who love you and care about you. They’re interested in you and your life. But that doesn’t mean they can relate to every area of your life, especially your business life. It’s why husband business owners struggle to help their wives understand and why wife business owners struggle to help their husbands understand. People with no vested interest, other than to help us, often struggle to fully understand what we’re going through because they can’t really understand the context of owning a business.
There are plenty of other people who surround us. Smart, bright people. Some are employees. We certainly can’t let our hair down in front of them. Since we’re the last line of defense and the first line of offense in our business, we know people are beholden to us. And that impacts our relationship with them. So it goes with people outside our company, too. People like professional service providers such as accountants or attorneys. Or vendors and suppliers.
Employees rely on us for their jobs. The others rely on us as clients or prospective clients. That makes it all hard to find a safe environment where we can really shell things down, say what we’re feeling or thinking and have people who get it, people who won’t judge us and people who will help us figure it out.
Did you know there is a group called Parents of Murdered Children? It’s a national organization for a very select group of people.
You don’t want to qualify to become a member, but if you do happen to qualify — is there any better group you could join? I can’t imagine that there would be.
You walk in the door, introduce yourself and instantly you’re connected to the group because everybody there gets it. The details of each family’s experiences may differ, but that doesn’t matter. The overwhelming context necessary for intentional and purposeful connection is present. Everybody in the group shares ONE BIG THING that binds them. Because of that ONE BIG THING every member of the group can feel safe, vulnerable and served in the group.
Our One Big Thing Is Business Ownership
This is the tie that binds. We can instantly relate. It makes communication instantly easier because we all get it.
I hope you get it – namely, I hope you understand the potential power of being part of such a group. Please go complete that short survey right now by visiting BulaNetwork.com/apply. Then we’ll talk on the phone briefly. By the way, this is as hard a sell as you’re going to get from me. If it’s right for you, we’ll know. If not, that’s okay, too. I hope you’ll keep listening to the podcast and finding value here at Grow Great.
Happy Saturday! Warning: I’m fixing to make you an offer. Well, it may be an offer for you. It depends on who you are. Along the way, I’m going to provoke you to think and perhaps consider some new ideas. I hope you find it useful.
I’m currently looking for U.S. based business owners who are prepared to take their business and their leadership to whole new heights…to join me inside The Peer Advantage by Bula Network. Quite simply, The Peer Advantage by Bula Network is a 7-member peer advisory group – a mastermind group, if you please. Seven entrepreneurs together with me serving as the smart guide. People willing to join forces to help each other grow their businesses by sharing experiences, insights, questions, and answers.
But today I want to focus on why this is the world’s best opportunity for entrepreneurs to grow.
Growth is popular to claim. Easy to say that we want, but much tougher to accomplish…because it’s not easy. Or comfortable. And we want to be comfortable, then when we are comfortable we want to remain comfortable.
There are 2 basic forces involved in this world’s best opportunity for entrepreneurs to grow. They’re PERSPECTIVE and POWER. Both involve our willingness to embrace – I mean fully embrace – the service, support, and help of others. Let’s talk about them.
PERSPECTIVE.
Here’s a story you may or may not have heard. Listen carefully.
Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.”
They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, “Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway.” All of them went where the elephant was. Every one of them touched the elephant.
“Hey, the elephant is a pillar,” said the first man who touched his leg.
“Oh, no! it is like a rope,” said the second man who touched the tail.
“Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man who touched the trunkof the elephant.
“It is like a big hand fan,” said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
“It is like a huge wall,” said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.
“It is like a solid pipe,” Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and every one of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, “What is the matter?” They said, “We cannot agree to what the elephant is like.” Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, “All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually, the elephant has all those features what you all said.”
“Oh!” everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.
The moral of the story is that there may be some truth to what someone says. Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes not because they may have a different perspective which we may not agree with. So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should think, “Maybe they have their reasons. I should find out more.” This way we don’t get in arguments. This allows us to derive benefit from people with different viewpoints and perspective.
Six blind men, with combined perspectives, got it right. By themselves, they only had a single perspective that didn’t accurately represent reality.
Entrepreneurs don’t grow based on illusion or delusion. We need reality. We need clarity. We need accuracy. To get that, we need the help of others. We need their perspectives. Not to make up our minds for us, but to help us see things as they truly are so we can make up minds with much better information. Result? Much better decisions. Coupled with much faster speed because as we’re benefiting from the perspective of others we’re vastly accelerating the decision-making process.
Another illustration is useful. It’s Plato’s allegory of the cave.
It begins with a scene painted of a group of prisoners who have lived chained to the wall of a dark cave their entire lives.
Every day the people in the cave watch shadows projected on a blank wall in front of them. The shadows are real and shape their entire reality. It’s their only viewpoint.
Now imagine that one of the prisoners leaves the cave and walks outside into the sunshine. For the first time in his life, he’s exposed to life outside the cave. He can now finally see the true forms and shapes of the shadows he thought were real. The allegory poses the question, “What would he think of his companions back in the cave?” He’d probably feel sorry for them and their limited reality because he now knows things they don’t.
If he returned back to the cave and told them about what he saw, they’d likely laugh at him and think he was crazy. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave explores the tension between the imagined reality that we think is real (shadows) versus the reality that is the truth (outside the cave). For our purposes today, it illustrates how a single viewpoint can limit our understanding and ability to see reality. Perspective is empowering when it’s expanded. It’s limiting when it’s restricted.
POWER.
Force is positive. Sure, it can also be negative, but I’m thinking of it more like LIFE-force. Forces for good. We need forces in our lives. Power that pushes us. Without, we devolve into lives of low character, crime, and other awful, selfish behavior. Think of this as power “on demand,” like the accelerator of your car.
Power is energy. The energy to propel us forward. No power, no forward progress or momentum.
There are two basic forms of power: internal and external. Both can be influenced internally and externally. Let me explain.
Motivation is a word you hear all the time. As in Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker. 😀
Well, I don’t think there is such a thing as a motivational speaker. Not really. They’re more accurately inspirational speakers. They inspire.
Motivation is the energy you bring to get the work done. It’s your internal energy or power. Some people can’t find the energy to get out of bed. They’re unmotivated. You can do whatever you want, say whatever you want…but until the person makes up their own mind to get out of bed, they’ll lay there all day.
Somebody may be able to supply a degree of power (or energy) in the form of inspiration. It may spark something inside them, but it’s not true power – not the kind of power required to get them out of bed. Only they can supply that.
External power can also happen in the context of seeing how we fit in a community or group. For example, professional athletes get traded in every sport. They leave one team to join a new one. When they enter the locker room of the new team they have to figure out – with the help of the coaching staff – where they fit. But the coaching staff won’t likely have the biggest impact on “fit.” The other players will. The “room” (in this case, the locker room) is more important than any single player in a team sport because a single player – no matter how impactful he may be – can’t determine the destiny of the team. This new player will get a sense of the culture of the group and he’ll have to figure out his place within the context of the team. High achievers will embrace the influences (the power exerted by others, especially the existing leadership) so they can quickly contribute. They’ll use that energy for their own individual performance and for their ability to contribute to the team’s performance.
It’s interesting to see players who may have struggled in one environment – on one team – move to a new team where their performance soars. What happened? Did they suddenly gain skills they lacked? Of course not. That change of “rooms” presented them with a new force – a new power and energy. They used it to their advantage and decided they’d lean into the new energy.
Everybody benefits from PERSPECTIVE and POWER, especially entrepreneurs who are so accustomed to going it alone.
As business owners, we’re surrounded by people. We can be with other people and still be lonely because there are many things we’re unable to share with people inside our company. And there are things we don’t want to share with anybody outside our company either. Mostly because the people in our lives are people to whom we’re connected in some way.
Employees see us as the boss. They mostly want to keep us happy. It’s unfair of us to burden them with our challenges anyway. Besides, they can’t relate to our problems. Even if they’re part of our leadership team we’re not likely going to rely on them for everything that hits our plate. Some decisions are best left to our solitude. It’s how we live.
Outside professionals are mostly people who have us as a client. Suppliers. Vendors. Service professionals. Sure, we solicit them for specific challenges. If I’m bogged down on negotiating a new lease I’m not making a move without my real estate attorney who specializes with such things. But if I’m considering merging with another company, I’m not going to trust him…or anybody else until I get more than ankle deep into the decision.
Who do I lean on during that period of time when I’m sticking my toe in the water until I get ankle deep? Nobody. Likely. I’m going to wrestle with it alone.
The loneliness isn’t defined as literal solitude necessarily. We may talk with a number of people. Maybe our spouse. Maybe a close friend. Maybe a therapist. 😉 But we’re still basically going it alone because there’s nobody who can really relate or understand. We’re just flapping our gums to get it off our chest. And if we’re really lucky (which isn’t that often in this regard), people just listen. No, we’re not likely that lucky. These people have opinions. They tell us we shouldn’t do it. Or we should do it. Talk about an uninformed opinion! It’s not helpful.
The World’s Best Opportunity
Here’s the challenge – surrounding ourselves with people who get it, but people who have no vested interest in the outcome. That is, they don’t benefit personally or individually from our decision. So they don’t exert any pressure (power) with a viewpoint (perspective) that seeks its own welfare. They simply are there to serve us to help us think through it and figure it out for ourselves. Their presence speeds things up significantly because like those blind men, they have a viewpoint worth considering. And they’re bound to have questions that will help us clarify and see things for what they really are – helping us avoid just seeing shadows cast on a wall.
The power of peers is obvious. Everybody is in the same boat of business building. The industry or space doesn’t matter. Business building is business building.
Parents of Murdered Children is a national support group for the poor people who have experienced that awful fate. You don’t want to qualify to join that group, BUT…if you do qualify what better group could you join? Who better to surround you during such a tragic time?
You walk in the room, introduce yourself by simply giving the group your name…and that’s it. That’s the only explanation necessary. You look around the room and realize everybody here “gets it.” They know what you’re feeling. They understand the struggle. Even though their specific experience may be very different, the heart of the connection with the entire group is powerful. The conversations are equally powerful because you’re not having to explain to this group what you may have to try to explain to your closest friends. This group understands it in a way your friends can’t. And THAT is a remarkable help. It’s a level of support and service you can’t get elsewhere.
The Peer Advantage by Bula Network is a level of support and service for business owners. Everybody is a business builder interested in elevating their own performance and the performance of their company. Every member is ready to climb to a higher altitude. And they know that if others are willing and able to help them, then they can get there faster. And they can climb higher.
The details are at ThePeerAdvantage.com, but I don’t respect people who hide things like a bullfighter hiding the sword behind the red cape. Nothing is hidden. So here’s the bottom line…
You’ll be joining a group of 7 entrepreneurs total. I’ll serve as the smart guide, but I’m also a member of the group.
We’ll meet every other week for 2 hours using a video conferencing platform like Zoom.us. You’ll be able to join via your mobile phone, your tablet or your computer.
Each meeting will have a hard start and stop time. We’ll hit the ground running every session. And we’ll end on time. We’re all busy. This won’t be a time waster.
Along the way, we’ll also have some live and recorded webinars to help the group learn new skills, whatever the group wants. We’ll leverage experts who can share their knowledge and insights with us. You won’t have to attend these live, but some will be live. They’ll all be available to you when it’s convenient for you.
The group will be comprised of business owners from around the U.S. They’ll be in a variety of industries and markets. That diversity will help us leverage the power of perspective.
Between our group sessions, we’ll use communication tools as needed. Expect some strong relationships to be forged.
The sessions will not be judgmental, filled with a circle of people who regularly use words like “should” or “shouldn’t.” As in, “You should do this” or “You shouldn’t do that.” Instead, it’ll be filled with people willing to ask questions so they can better understand and help you better understand. It’ll be filled with people willing to push you in the most caring way because they know why you’re there — for the same reason they’re there. To grow, improve and transform. They want to see you soar. They want to soar.
It’s reciprocal. Have you ever helped somebody and felt like you received as much, or more help, than they did? That’s how it works. So whether we’re in the “hot seat” with the focus on us or we’re serving somebody else with their challenges or opportunities, we’re using the information to figure out how it can benefit us and our company.
There’s a $1,299 enrollment fee that is non-refundable. Then quarterly membership is $2,697 paid in advance. For the first 90-days, that full amount of $2,697 is fully refundable. That means, if after six 2-hour sessions you don’t find the value high enough, we part friendly and I give you the $2,697 back. But that’s not going to happen. I’m confident you’re going to find this to best deal going – the highest ROI of anything you could possibly do! It’s going to change your life in the most positive ways possible.
Here’s what you need to do right now. Go to BulaNetwork.com/apply and complete that confidential Google form. It’s an application. Complete that and it’ll prompt you and me to jump on the phone together so we can more fully discuss your business. We’ll decide together if this is the right opportunity for you. But I stand by my statement that this is the world’s best opportunity for entrepreneurs to grow!
Leo Bottary and I were enjoying lunch and conversation this week. We don’t get to see each other in person very often, the hazards of me living in Texas and him living in California. We do a podcast together – What Anyone Can Do (titled after Leo’s latest book by the same title). Buy a copy here.
Among the many things I enjoy about my friendship with Leo is our diversity. He’s well educated. Me? Not so much. I left college with 18 hours shy of a degree in journalism. Leo has an advanced degree. Leo has spent a lifetime making a variety of connections in all sorts of spaces. Until about a decade ago I spent my entire career with my head down operating retail companies. He’s from Boston. I’m from Ada, Oklahoma. 😀
Coming from two different worlds is beneficial to us. Well, I’ll speak for myself. It’s beneficial to me. Leo provides a perspective that’s often different from my own. It’s not about whether either one of us right. Or wrong. It’s like looking at anything – like a car (I only use that because I know auto manufacturers have websites that allow customers to take virtual tours of cars, inside and out). The view from the back is quite different from the front, which is altogether different than looking at the side, but together – it’s a more complete view. An improved view.
Leo and I were talking about some future plans we have individually and collectively. At some point Leo challenged me to consider an approach that was 180 degrees different than the one I had planned. We talked about it, with me asking him to clarify so I could more fully understand. It made sense to me. I hadn’t considered it before. There’s the power of peers! (Ironically, the title of Leo’s first book, coauthored with Leon Shapiro)
Don’t get hung up on right or wrong. If the only view we have of a car is the rear, it’s neither right nor wrong. It just is.
We walk around to the front and take a very different look. We don’t conclude, we’ll that’s not right. We understand that we’re looking at the same vehicle, just from a different PERSPECTIVE.
Leo and I are both passionate about the same thing — the power of the collective, the truth that who we surround ourselves with matters. We both have a deep belief in the power of others and think it’s one of the most highly under-utilized strategies in every space, including business. It’s a big thing to have in common. But it doesn’t mean we see things, including details, in the same way. We’re committed to sharing and listening though. No judgment. No “you-should-do-this-not-that.” Just deep conversations, insightful questions and an ongoing quest for clarity so the best solutions can be found.
Flipping it around – whatever IT is – isn’t always easy without somebody provoking us. We can improve the practice by intentionally looking at it from the opposite view. But that’s difficult without having others challenge us in a caring way. It’s the old parable of the blind men and the elephant.
A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable.” So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. In the case of the first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said “This being is like a thick snake.” For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said, “elephant is a wall.” Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.
Various lessons stem from that parable, but for our purposes, I’m focused on our need as business owners for deeper understanding, and respect for different perspectives on the same object of observation.
The Peer Advantage by Bula Network is my professional effort (and passion) to serve just 7 business owners with an advantage of being surrounded by people who will do this for one another. I’m assembling 7 high performing, humble, but courageous business owners who understand how critical deeper understanding with the help of others can be to their personal and professional growth. You can find out more by going to ThePeerAdvantage.com. If you own a business anywhere in America please check it out.
Days ago the book was released – 
The line came from a bit of dialogue in a 2009 movie featuring George Clooney, The Men Who Stare At Goats. Clooney plays Lyn Cassady. Bob is a reporter friend inquiring about Lyn’s life.
Leo and I were talking about some future plans we have individually and collectively. At some point Leo challenged me to consider an approach that was 180 degrees different than the one I had planned. We talked about it, with me asking him to clarify so I could more fully understand. It made sense to me. I hadn’t considered it before. There’s 
