In keeping with the theme of the New Year and getting your ship sailing in the right
direction, making necessary and often tough changes and decisions, this week I’m
going to take you behind the scenes of how I get so much done and manage so many
different projects, businesses, income streams, and relationships.
The short answer is, I work. Hard, long, often, relentlessly. But, that’s not the
sexy answer you are looking for and to leave it at that wouldn’t be telling you all
the truth.
My business is pretty much divided right down the middle in terms of getting money
and fulfilling for the money we get. My primary responsibility is being me, going
out and getting clients and expanding relationship into bigger opportunities,
creating enough demand to raise fees and become more valuable.
That’s all another way of saying creating chaos, running around causing trouble, and
doing a whole of stuff then having to figure it out after the fact. That’s the way
it goes if you want to get a lot done, we are valuable to a lot of people, and
create above average income.
But, there is after all another side to the business. You can never fully do the
“work on the business” versus “in the business” thing entirely. It’s impossible.
At least someone has to pay attention to the details, deliver on the goods, fulfill
for the money.
Without some backend support, someone taking care of the ying while you’re out
yanging…you’ll go nowhere fast and hit a ceiling in your business quickly leading
to frustration and unhealthy stress. I say unhealthy because too many people think
stress is avoidable and crumble under pressure. Not so. Everything happens under
pressure and stress is inevitable but it doesn’t ever have to be unhealthy.
Back to my point, and my brother, who is my business partner and really life partner
as friend and confidant. I mean, he keeps me alive, out of jail, and relatively
sane.
Yet, I seldom see him, less than once a month now, this year. We talk one
structured time each week and have more random conversations about football and
politics than business, because we have a system for working together, for building
businesses.
We divide things right down the middle both using our own specialized and developed
skills, maximizing our talents, things we prefer to be doing, we do.
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On to A New Year
Friday, January 20th, 2012January is one of my favorite months. The feeling of renewal and rebirth that this season brings can be life-changing for so many. For others, especially as we get older, we get stuck back in our grooves.
Why do people as they seem to get older find it tougher to reinvent themselves? To get out-of –the-groove so to speak? Why are the people that are able to reinvent themselves seem to be geniuses that change the world? Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Madonna, and even Tony Robbins seem to keep themselves relevant through the times when the “norm” is to have “your time, your glory days” and move on.
Steve Jobs had a theory that as people get older, they become more and more engrained in patterns, and these patterns cause them to start to limit their ability to think creatively. The range of their thinking would become smaller and smaller.
These patterns become our groove, they are comfortable and safe, at least we feel their safe. But are they? Is it safe to get grooved in a career, your role in a business, a business model, a certain kind of product or even an economy?
I love working in technology because the very nature of it forces you to turnover old grooves and think in different paradigms almost every day. You can’t get in a groove in this industry. If you do, the world just passes you by…which is pretty much the way it works anyway, right?
What I mean is, are you stuck in an old job groove? an old economy groove? an old business groove? an old relationship groove? or a even an attitude groove?
A new year is not just a new way to date your checks (if you are still stuck in the groove of writing checks, that is). It is the chance to commit to throw yourself into something new. You are not a train, you are built to create, to solve problems, to produce.
You are designed for greatness by your creator. If you are not making the impact of Mother Teresa or M and M, it’s because you are playing a smaller-than image of which you were created. A groove to deep could be your grave or worse yet, the death of your dreams.
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Tags: Business goals, indianapolis small business, New Year's Resolutions
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