Focus to Create Hot Moments

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Magnified Focus

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

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

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

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

Your Laser Focus and the HOT MOMENT

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

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

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

Action Plan

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

Connecting – Networking’s Common Flaw

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Networking – Not Connecting

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

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

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

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

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

Connecting – Not Networking

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

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

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

Here are some tips to get started:

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

Commonality makes connections.

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

Action Plan

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

The Lie of Experience as the Best Teacher

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Experience Happens

You have probably heard it said hundreds if not thousands of times during your life.

Experience is the best teacher.

Every day, from the moment you rise until you put your head on the pillow, you are going through a series of experiences. Some experiences are what we would call good; nice things happen, we feel happy about it. Others….not so much.

See the Ah-Ha! Moment of the Week on this topic.

Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a
collection of mistakes is what is called experience.
-Denis Waitley

Here’s the thing: if every day we ALL have experiences then why is it that most of us don’t get any smarter?

More Than Experience

If experience were truly the best teacher, then would it not logically follow that each of us would be getting smarter every day and would never repeat the same mistakes because our experience would have taught us better? Is that what happens in your life? Is that what happens around you? You know what I am talking about, the people who keep making the same mistake they made yesterday and the day before, getting the same results, and not getting that it ain’t gonna work that way. Why? If experience is the best teacher, then they should have already learned not to do that again.

I have to admit to being hardheaded this way sometimes. I’ll do the same dumb thing over and over again, somehow expecting different results. I might rationalize it, excuse it, or simply learn the wrong lesson from previous experience. I’m not an idiot, I am a fairly bright guy. Why isn’t experience teaching me anything?

Experience Plus

The truth is that experience alone is no kind of teacher at all. It is REFLECTIVE EXPERIENCE that really makes the difference. It is how we analyze what we experience that allows us to draw the appropriate conclusions and lessons from what happens to us and engage in positive behaviors to prevent it from happening again. That reflection needs to be timely; it needs to happen within a short period of time after the experience. It should not be rushed. The best approach is usually to spend a little time at the end of the day thinking about what good things happened, what not so good things happened, and examining them. Ask questions about each experience:

What was good (or not so good) about it?
Who was involved?
What was the outcome?
Was that the outcome I anticipated?
What would have been a better or ideal outcome?
Why did it happen that way?
What can I do differently to change the outcome?
How can I use this to add value to someone else?

Experience as an Even BETTER Teacher

The last question leads to the last point. As the Denis Waitley quote said above, mistakes are painful. So even if we are learning from our mistakes, we still have to go through the pain. Just a show of hands out there, who likes to go through pain?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

So how can we avoid the pain? Simply by learning from others experience. In fact, I believe that other people’s experience can be absolutely the best teacher for us. Examining the experiences of others allows us to be more evaluative about it because our minds are not clouded by emotion or pain. We can assess the decisions, the process, and the outcomes and attempt to come up with practical applications to help prevent it from occurring in OUR lives.

One of the best ways to allow people to share stories with you. Stories allow experiences to be personalized; we connect with them better and connect with the people involved. Reading the biographies (and autobiographies) of people we admire also is an excellent way to do this. If they have any level of transparency, they will readily share their mistakes in their stories and we can derive great lessons from people we know to be accomplished persons.

Action Plan:

How are you going to implement regular reflection on your experiences?
Pick at least two people that you want to learn from this month. Get books about them, publications, web sites about them, or just sit down over coffee (or drinks) and talk to them. Make notes on what you learn

How to Rejoice Always

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Rejoice – Enjoying What We Have

We All Ride a Roller Coaster

I try to be transparent with what I share here. The more you can see me, warts and all, then the more likely you are to realize that success in business and life is attainable; that we all have flaws, shortcomings, and challenges we face. Steve Jobs, despite his incredible vision and gift for marketing, had big character flaws. Same with Bill Gates, and many others. Ray and Maurice McDonald didn’t have the vision to make their restaurant a household name; it took Ray Kroc to do that. We ALL have hurdles to face and have up times and down times.

I share that because recently I have been having a down time. For a variety of reasons, things have not gone well in different parts of my life and I have gotten down on myself and doubts began to creep in. When that happens for me, I go back and look for things that remind me to re-focus and think positive.

Warning: The rest of this post will have a decidedly spiritual bent to it. I apologize if it offends you; I do not apologize for who I am and what I believe.

I ran across this: I have a card I received at a men’s group meeting years ago that I keep around. It is shaped like a stop sign and, in fact, on one side looks like a stop sign. On the other it carries this verse from the Bible, specifically from Philippians 4:4-7:

“Rejoice in the Lord ALWAYS (emphasis mine)! I say again, REJOICE! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Changes in Attitude

For me, of course, it is a reminder of where I have put my faith and my life. It is also a reminder that no matter what else I have things I can take great joy in throughout my life daily.

Let’s expand it beyond and see what we can find for everyone. When we have an ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE, we are better able to keep things in perspective. When we rejoice in the things we have that cannot be taken away, that the world cannot touch, then we provide a solid base for how we regard everything else that happens in our life. Once we have that perspective and are thinking in gratitude, therefore thinking positively, then we are better equipped to handle the crisis and not only survive but come out ahead. Zig Ziglar often said

“The more you express gratitude for what you have the more you will have to express gratitude for.”

Adopting the principle of rejoicing yields big returns; perhaps not always in the way we expect. Certainly, we all wish we had more money, more resources, more opportunities, more clients, more of whatever is on our mind right now. Yet when we rejoice in what we do have, we see that not only do we have a full cup but that it actually overflows. On the other hand, when we focus on what we don’t have we can lose what we do have. I remember years ago watching a comedy sketch where a man asks another man who is holding a cup of coffee for the time. The second man turns his wrist to look at his watch and pours out his cup of coffee. Like the man, we lose focus on what’s in our hand to look at something else.

Consider This

What would your life be like if, for say at least a week, when someone asks you how you are you respond with “I am rejoicing!” Don’t reflect on what people will think about you, center on what it will do for you. Certainly it would be hard to say that continually and be negative.

I am going to try that for the next two weeks. I invite you to try it with me and let me know how it goes.

Action Plan:

Begin a gratitude journal. Get a notepad or journal or use an online one like Penzu. Every day for at least a month, write down at least one thing you are grateful for. Each day you have to enter something you have not previously added; in other words, each day is unique. Look at the list often.
Respond to any greeting of “how are you” with “I am rejoicing!” for at least a week. If someone asks you why, use the gratitude reason of the day or some other response if you wish.

I welcome your thoughts here about the ideas shared in today’s post!

The Key to Your Personal Loyalty

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Personal Loyalty

The Critical Mass of Loyalty

Some form of loyalty factors into every level of our lives:

our business or career success
our leadership
our personal relationships
our spiritual growth

Often loyalty is the missing factor that helps lead us to success in many endeavors. Without loyalty, we cannot gather and lead effective teams and success eludes us. Without loyalty, we cannot lead or be lead by anyone because loyalty is what creates the dependent bonds that allow us to follow or care enough to lead. Without loyalty all personal relationships fail because they drop to the level of simple transactional relationships instead of the caring and devoted connections that become permanent. Without loyalty, we cannot devote ourselves to enlightenment and growth because we will never to open to having our heart touched or our soul fulfilled.

So critical is loyalty as a factor that the author of Think and Grow Rich and many other self-improvement tomes Napoleon Hill once said,

“Lack of loyalty is one of the major causes of failure in every walk of life.”

Loyalty Out Leads to Loyalty In

The best way to garner loyalty is to give loyalty freely. By freely I mean that you build relationships and award loyalty without reservation once trust has entered in. What you don’t want to do is wantonly through your loyalty around to whomever is the flavor of the week.

What are some qualities that demonstrate loyalty. Use the word LOYALTY to remember to practice these qualities in your life.

Love others before they deserve it or earn it. Care enough to want to add value to them.

Open your mind to the positive attributes of others. Too often, we look for reasons to not enter a relationship instead of the reasons to enter. If you are looking for a reason to be unhappy or dissatisfied, you will always find it. EVERYONE has positive qualities, the question is how do you bring them out.

Yield to the needs of the other over your own. It’s hard to be loyal to others when you are too busy putting yourself first. A loyal person always puts others first.

Accept others as they are, warts and all. Realize that YOU can’t change them. Be prepared to take them as they are or not at all; and in most cases not at all is a choice that causes you miss out on anything positive that could come from the relationship.

Live to serve others. Seek to add value in every encounter, with no expectation of receiving value in return. Relationships, whether business or otherwise, are not always transactional; it’s not always a trade. Be prepared to accept value when it is offered to you, but don’t expect it.

Trust others. This is critical. You cannot give loyalty unless you trust and you cannot receive loyalty unless you are trusted. In an interesting twist, people who don’t trust are generally not trusted. Think about it, how many people do you trust who quite clearly do not trust anyone else?

Yearn to spend time with others. In a busy world, we too often have a tendency especially with business relationships to want to go in, conduct our business, and go out. Big mistake. Take the time to build. Get personal. Ask questions beyond the sale. Build friendships, not just business partners.

When you apply these principals, you will develop loyalty to others and earn loyalty from them. You will build mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationships that touch the heart. They enlighten and enrich and are profitable; sometimes financially, sometimes spiritually, sometimes relationally. They add and receive value.

How You Lead Today Determines How Your Team Succeeds Tomorrow!

Focus to Create Hot Moments

Magnified Focus

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

Your Laser Focus and the HOT MOMENT

Action Plan

Connecting – Networking’s Common Flaw

Networking – Not Connecting