Hungry Students

We just came back from Orrins house in Florida for a moving on promotion.  I would first like to thank the Woodward’s for opening their home up to a mob of people.  We had a great time showing everyone the property, the house, and especially the yacht, Dream Builder, and boy does it live up to that name. This trip was one of the best trips I have been on since I joined the Team business. For many people there, it was a taste of the life they always wanted to live.  This picture doesnt capture everyone around the pavilion but they are all paying attention to the speakers and trying to gather any nuggets that they can take home with them.

Orrins Florida Promotion picture

The thing I love about these promotion trips is it shows us what we can accomplish when we put our mind to it.  This promotion was a moving on promotion.  That means you had to hit the next level in your business to qualify for the trip.  To do that required setting the goal, making a game plan, and then attacking that game plan and probably adjusting the plan as you started to move forward.  It sounds so simple on the surface but as you start to dig deeper it does require more of you.

Set a goal – the simplest of all steps.  State the number you want to hit.  There are many reasons why we don’t do that and most of them are tied to some fear within us.  Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of change, fear of one of the steps.  It’s up to each of us to figure that out and push through it or go to your mentor for help.  I love what Orrin Woodward says, “If you don’t set a goal you will hit it with amazing accuracy.”

Make a game plan – this can definitely be a little tougher because there are many factors at play but if you talk to your mentor they can give you many insights.  I think one of the hardest steps is we worry too much about the original game plan and if it won’t happen.  We have to come up with the best plan we can for the current situation and then know that we will probably have to adjust it on the journey.

Adjust the plan – as we start to move forward toward our plan we need regular checks with our mentor to see if what adjustments we need to make.  I don’t think I have ever seen an original game plan work through out the entire process.  All game plans end up with some adjustments.  If you aren’t sitting with a mentor then your adjustments may be coming to late.

Congrats to everyone that qualified for this promotion.  You have done the steps necessary to achieve any level of success that you want to achieve.

God Bless

Visualize the Change you Want

Reading Orrin Woodward’s latest book Resolved gave me a new insight into visualization and a different angle on how to use it to effectively change.  We have all heard of the power of visualization.  In Orrin’s book he goes deep into the power of not just visualization but connecting your ant ( conscience ) and your elephant ( sub – conscience ).  If you can figure out how to harness this power you can really accomplish anything.

Author Vince Poscente in The Ant and The Elephant, describes the difference between the conscious and the sub-conscious mind, teaching that the conscious mind in one second of thinking stimulates 2,000 neurons, while the sub-conscious mind in a second imaging stimulates four billion neurons.  That’s 4,000,000,000 neurons to 2,000 neurons ; literally two million times more neurons are stimulated in the sub-conscious than the conscious mind in a second of mental activity.  This is why you will hear every performer at the top of their game talking about using visualization as a powerful weapon to their success.  In “Resolved” Orrin gives 2 examples of this, olympic athletes and Will Smith, and how they used the power of it.

Most of us think about this elephant and mental picturing only from one angle.  That angle is to picture what we want.  Weather that is a material reward, helping some cause, paying off debt or eliminating a job.  I never thought about using this tool to change myself.  To change my attitude, how I react, what I say, or even how I think.  I was trying to do those things but I was using the ant method instead of the elephant method.  I would write down 3 things that I wanted to work on and change about myself.  I would put them on my mirror in my bathroom and my steering wheel so I could see them and read them regularly.  This process did work and it still works but now I have realized that using elephant method is a much more effective way of making the changes that I want to make.

I have tried my new technique and was shocked at how fast the change happened.  What I do now is write down what I want to change but I write down to visualize the change.  This is what I mean.  My first list of items I wanted to change was  smile, book a follow-up meeting, and don’t get defensive when I got questioned about my business.  Now what I would do is write a note to remind myself to visualize me smiling, visualize me booking the follow-up meeting and visualize how I would respond if someone did question me about my business.  Doing this is using the four billion instead of the two thousand and obviously would cause change quicker.

I have recently tried this on a new list of items I am working on and I have seen the change almost immediately! I didn’t believe it so I told my wife and she tried it on something she was working on.  She had the exact same result! Now this doesn’t mean that it is permanently programmed into our brain but the change happened that much faster.  Now we just have to continue doing the visualization to make the movie that we play, in our sub conscious mind,  a permanent movie. Hope this help

God Bless

Know Where You’re Going ?

I have always been a person that was active and liked to work out.  My family  also,  seems to have, a high metabolism.  So I love any kind of mental or fitness challenge.  I know some you are thinking, ” You lucky dog!”  (Referring to the metabolism part).  But not so fast my friend.  All of that changed when I turned 40.  It has been an ongoing challenge to fight the fat.  Being busy and running the roads a lot did not help my cause.  I would tend to eat lots bad foods and I wasn’t getting the exercise  that I used to get.

The exercise part was kind of easy to fix, just make the time.  I absolutely hate running on a treadmill! I hate it! Running in place, staring at a wall……Aghhhhh!  But I hated looking at my stomach in the mirror more.  First lesson grasshopper.    When the pain of staying the same is great then the pain of change, you will change.  I still hate the treadmill so I had to figure out a different strategy.  I found out I could do sprints at an incline and burn even more calories.  YES!  I can do sprints, not so monotonous and quicker.  I added the sprints in and started to see some results.

I still wasn’t getting to where I wanted to go fast enough, so I decided to add something else to help speed up the process.  I did something called the Lemonade Cleanse.  This is like ramming your head through a brick wall, but if there is a fire and its the only way out, you will do it.  I need to get to my point so I will discuss the lemonade another time.  The point is it helps you lose weight fast.

My real issue was once I lost the weight how do I keep myself from getting back into that position again. (Flabby belly, if you forgot).  This is where the worst smart phone app of all time comes into play.  See,  I never had any idea of how many calories I was eating, if they were good or bad calories, fat grams, protein or carbs.  All of his is important information if your working out to lose weight and gain muscle.  I was violating the first law of success.  If you don’t know where you’re at you can’t move forward.  So me and my wife downloaded an app called, My Fitness Pal.  It tracks all of the information I listed above and gives you daily goals to hit.  It is very easy to use.  I started tracking my foods and couldn’t believe how many calories I was eating in a day.  I was totally deceived.  I thought I would be way under my daily allotted calories and I was way over. If you go out to eat at a restaurant,  that day is shot!

This brings us to the leadership part of this blog.  If there is any area in your LIFE  that you want to improve, you first must know where you’re at and have a way to track where you want to go.  Sometimes this is hard to do and sometimes it’s easy but if you don’t know where you are at on a daily basis you will for sure not get to where you want to go.

God Bless

 

Productive Paranoia

I found a very interesting topic in Jim Collins latest book called Productive Paranoia.  Every great company that he followed embraced this concept to a certain degree.  I watched the importance of this first hand.   My mentor’s Orrin Woodward  and       Chris Brady are always pre pared for what could happen.  The interesting twist was this paranoia did not make them procrastinators. It did not make them sacred to make decisions, or have “analysis paralysis”.   It just made them very aware that hard times could come and they should prepare for the worst but not let it affect their end goal or mission.  Most people, especially the choleric or high D personalities think this means not making decisions or having a “sky is falling mentality”.  That just shows how much they need to grow.  Some times shot first and then ask questions can be the end of your company, relationships or finances.  To succeed through difficult times requires some pre thought and planning for,  WHAT IF.

One example of this is a team of people, lead by Breashear,  that were climbing Mount Everest to do an IMAX video.  They were at Camp 111 some  24, 500 feet up the mountain.  As they looked down, 3,000 feet below them, there was a group of 50 climbers heading their  way.  He had spent an entire year planning every aspect of this trip and his investors had spent millions of dollars to make this trip successful.  Their goal was to get the best film shots of the journey to the summit and to bring everyone, safely, back down the mountain.  As he was getting ready for the day’s journey and saw those 50 people coming up the mountain.  His productive paranoia started to kick in.

Productive paranoia number one – build cash reserves or buffers in case something goes wrong.                                                              He knew that he had this one licked.  He had prepared for this climb a year before the actual climb.  He had enough gear and reserves, oxygen canisters,  to make it through almost anything or any delay.  He felt comfortable with the first stage of paranoia.

Productive paranoia number two – bound risk = death line risk, asymmetric risk, and uncontrollable risk.                                           This is the one that really mad him nervous because all three risk were evident.  What if a storm comes up and gives those 50 climbers time catch up with him, what if all those climbers are at the summit at the same time,  what if they need to get down the mountain fast but these inexperienced climbers are in their way, what if the weight of all these climbers pulls out the anchors,  what if he cant get the shots he wants because there are so many climbers on the mountain – he met with his team and after thinking through they decided to climb down to base camp and ascend after the mountain had cleared.  Key point – they could do that because Breashear brought enough reserves in case something went wrong.  He was productively paranoid.

Productive paranoia number three –  Zoom out then Zoom in and remain aware to changing conditions and respond effectively. This was the process he went through.  Zoom out – the mountain has changed and is different then what he expected  ( unusual amount of climbers )  Zoom in – new plan.  We have enough reserves and funding to wait it out and still get the shots we want.

There are many examples of companies that survived because they  had a productive paranoia through process.  Southwest Airlines also went though this process and when 911 happened they were the only airline to turn a profit because they had planned for the worst.

Do you have enough money set aside in case something breaks in the house?

Do I have a budget so I can make sure the money I need to run my business is there?

Am I teaching my kids to say no to drugs before some one else ask them to try them?

The goal I am about to run for, do I have another plan in case something changes on the journey?

What if our house doesn’t go up in value?

What if the stock market takes another big drop?

What if gas prices go up another dollar?

We can apply this same thought process, not to slow us down or get stuck in the mud, but just to be ready in case something does happen. This is how the great companies not only have survived but thrived during changes in the economy, changes in regulations or new competition.

God Bless

Fatherhood

I would like to take a few moments and talk about a topic that the rest of our civilization very rarely talks about.  The subject is fatherhood.  Our society puts the majority of its emphasis on moms.  I don’t have any thing against motherhood or being a mom.  I have stayed home with kids for extended amounts of time and I have no idea how they handle what they handle.  With all that said there are more and more studies coming out about the vital role a father plays.  First I have a story and then some statistics.  The intention of this is just to get us to think about our role as dads. I grew up without one but I had a great family system around me and some great friends that kept me from becoming one of these statistics.

There were 2 sons who had a father.  And the father said to his 2 sons,” Boys, before I share any of my estate with you, I must go away for a while and build it so that one day it might actually be worth something.” When will you come home, Dad?”  the younger one said.  “I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, son.”  So, not long after that, the father got together all he had and set of for a another city.

While he built great wealth, he wasted much of it on wild living.  After that there was a severe recession and so he worked even harder to regain what he had.  Every time he would get ahead something would happen and he would be put back again.  Abandoning his leadership at home for his own self-absorption far away, he became the modern day prodigal – the lost and wayward father.

Finally, in his desperation, after years of being away from his home and his 2 sons, the father came to his senses, and said, ” All of my work has been in vain; its meaningless.”  I have sinned against heaven and my boys.  So he got up and returned to his 2 sons who were now grown men.

He approached the younger of the 2 with his confession and said,” I would like to spend some time with you if you don’t mind,” but his son said,” I’d love to Dad, if I can find the time….lets talk soon.  With tears in his eyes the father realized the tragedy of his life.  “My boys have grown up to be just like me, my boys have grown up just like me.”

 

Statistics from the University of Pittsburg Office of Child Development, the future of children who grow up in fatherless homes.

63 % of all youth suicides

90 % of all homeless and runaway children

85% of children who exhibit behavior disorders

71% of all high school dropouts

75% of adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers

70 % of juveniles in state sponsored institutions

85 % of all youths in prison

 

We may not have left to go to another city, like in our story.  But we have left mentally through video games, bowling leagues and TV.  Let’s make sure we that we give our children what they need.  They need us.  They need us to help them, love them, discipline them but most of all, they need time.  Let’s make sure that we don’t let those statistics be the same with fathers that are in the home.  There is nothing wrong with having a career or having hobbies.  Just make sure that we are equally focused on raising the next generation of great men.

 

God Bless

 

Big time winners! LIFE / TEAM Convention

We have returned from Colombus, the site of the Life winter major convention.  I want to take some time and recognize the accomplishments of 2 great leaders.  The Spiewaks and the Hatchers.  The Spiewaks and their team completed the sweep of all the top guns.  The Hatchers and their team completed an amazing 23 month round table run.  Both leaders have many strengths that their team can learn from.

Holger and I used to work for the same manufacturing company.  Holger, who is originally from Germany, showed up at work with a 1970 something car that was as big as a boat.  After taking my trip to Europe,  I can see why he had such a fascination with big cars.  They don’t exist in Europe nor would they fit!  Even though that car was a little out of place (say this line like Thurston Howell from Gilligan’s Island) for corporate america darling,  Holger didn’t care and he was always willing to walk to the beat of his own drum.  Little did I know how much that trait would benifit him later on when I approached him with some crazy business idea.  Holger signed up with the Team and immediately he was 100% in and doing what it takes to make the business work.  At the time the only meetings were two and half hours from his house.  He never questioned it or complained about it.  He said “if this is what it takes to become great, then I will pay that price”.  I was just getting started myself so I didn’t realize that this kind of commitment was not normal.  I thought  everyone would be like that.    Holger’s loyalty to the TEAM and his team is legendary and is one of the key ingredients that makes his group of leaders such a dominate force.  Congrats to one of my best friends and a phenomenal leader.

 

 

Roy and I met in the normal process of building a community of leaders.  One of our team members contacted him and we went to show him the idea.  The lady that contacted them was worried because  they had tried everything and they probably wont be interested.  To me that meant the exact opposite.  They just hadn’t found the right tool.Yet!  As soon as I left their house I knew I had a potential rock star.  They came out of the gates running.  The next meeting we had lined up they already had someone there to see the business plan.  They came out of the gates running and continued running even when things weren’t going to plan.  The Hatchers are fanatical about game planning and understanding where they are at and what they need to do next.  They know everything about every spot in their business and therefore it is easy to P.D.C.A. with them.  They have great attitudes and are always willing to be counseled on the areas that they need to grow in.  Roy has been through many trials and tribulations and could easily use all of them as excuses to why he shouldn’t be a success.  He has chosen to use them as reasons why he should be successful.  This couple is doing what it takes to be a PC couple. Congrats on your first big victory.

I found a quote that is the opposite of both of these leaders.

Excuses are the nails which build the house of failure.  Don Wilder

What kind of house are you building?

 

 

 

Are You Feeding Your Elephant ?

I wanted to share a fun day with you.  We set a big promotion for the Musketeer Team and whoever hit it was invited to go do a super car drive.  That meant you would get a chance to drive five of the best cars in the world.  What a great way to determine what car you are going to buy in the future.  We had a 143 mile journey to Lake Mead and back.  We drove through some of the most scenic desert areas I have ever seen before.  It was around 50 degrees moving up to 60 and not  a cloud in the sky.  Perfect driving weather.  We had a blast!  The 458 Italia was a smash hit.  When you are driving 5 other super cars and 1 of them  is head shoulders above the rest.  That lets you know how special that car is.  I was so filled with adrenaline after I got out of the 458 that I couldn’t talk and actually felt a little wobbly.  My elephant is in full charge running straight towards an Italian car.  I hope you find something that excites you this much and make sure you do everything you can to qualify for all promotions.

Hope you enjoy this video we put together.

 

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Freedom Day

This is one of the best post I get to make.  In the month of December we have had 3 people who have built their own business, to a financial level,  that enables them to walk away from their jobs.  They are Carol Miller, Chad Baker, and Jason Tingley.  They are now time free and can pursue what they love to do.  They learned the skills, techniques and principles by being plugged into 2 sources.  The Team biz and The Life Business.  These organizations are led by Orrin Woodward, Chris Brady, Tim Marks, George Guzzardo, Claude Hamilton and Dan Hawkins.

Sorry but I cant figure out how to flip video

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If you are looking to one day do what these champions did.  Let me give you a  tip to their success.  They all kept digging when others told them there was no gold in this business model.  There is a famous legend of a gold miner who dug into the side of a mountain range for 20 years.  He had dug many shafts all over the mountain range but he would only dig them a little ways and then get frustrated and start a new shaft  He told his friends every day that he was about to hit it big.  He eventually died of old age and penniless.  After his death the group that gained access to his mountain continued to dig into some of the tunnels he had started.  After a week they hit one of the biggest veins of gold in North America.  The sad part was that he was only 3 feet away!  You never get the reward for starting something.  The prize always goes to the one that finishes.  These 3 champs had many times were they could have stopped but the continued until they hit their vein of gold.

The other area that I have seen them push through is criticism.   It is amazing how you can totally be wasting your life away and no one will say a thing.  But if you start trying to excel and become great, watch out.  The critic’s come out of the woodwork.  They will tell you every reason why someone like you cant make it.  They don’t have another opportunity for you to pursue but you shouldn’t do this one.  I have never understood why a friend, family, co-worker wouldn’t want you to strive to become better.

Teddy Roosevelt said it best, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. “

The Most Forgotten Element of Success

I have only been able to read a little information on this topic.  The reason why is, it seems most people don’t talk about it or at least they don’t package their writing around this subject.  There are 2 books that will help you, the Bible and a book by Deborah Norville.   The topic is respect.

The test had been announced in advance, which meant the students had the chance to study and come well prepared.  Test papers were handed out, and the college exam commenced.  The room was silent except for the scratching of pencils and the occasional tapping of a pencil as students tried to figure out an answer. Until the last question.  One by one, as students reached the end of the test, they read the final question with consternation.  Some grunted in disgust.  One student exclaimed, “Your kidding, right?”  Another asked,” Does the last question count toward our grade?” It had to be a joke.  “Yes it does,” replied the teacher, somewhat tersely.  When all the papers had been handed in, the professor finally explained.  The last question was,    ” What is the first name of the man who cleans our school?”  Virtually every student had been stumped.

 

The teacher’s point was as you go through life you will meet many people and all of them are important.  We go through life so hurried and in a rush that we fail to recognize people or even give them a nod, a glance, or dare I say a smile.  Every subtle acknowledgment of another human being puts a little deposit in their soul.  You have walked past someone at the gym or a store and if they give you  a head nod or a “hey,” for some reason it makes you feel better.  Every once in a while we go out to eat at these “fu-fu” restaurants.  The ones that have a water person, bread person, and then the waiter.  If we say hi to the water guy he almost doesn’t know what to say.    He will stutter a little…..”Hi”   back to us.                Dr Goldstein says,” You have to have a good self-image of yourself and if you don’t you disrespect yourself and others around you.”  So that means we need to work on ourselves the most and it will grow our respect for others automatically.

 

Some people are great with people they don’t interact with regularly but they aren’t so good with the people that they see on a regular basis.  I think this paragraph from Deborah Norville sums up how we should think about the people in our lives.

Respect requires empathy, the capacity to anticipate and understand the feelings of others.  It requires consideration.  It is letting the Golden Rule shape the way we interact.  It’s being mindful to see a situation from others perspective.  When respect is given it communicates to the recipient of the respect that he is valued and important.

If you go through your day and are so busy thinking about how someone treated you, what they said to you, what you thought they should have said to you, or they should have let you go first.  Then by default you are violating the point from Deborah’s paragraph.  If you are only thinking about yourself, it is impossible to anticipate or understand how someone else feels.  If you don’t understand that all humans are naturally selfish and sinful creatures, then you will have a hard time having empathy when some one does something stupid.

I have to admit that this is a pet peeve of mine.  Not that it makes it more important it just really annoys me when I see someone not even hold a door for the next person. Or cut their way in front of other people.  Every plane ride I take someone from 4 rows back tries to push their way to the front past all the other people standing in front of them.  AAAGGGGHHHHHH!  Those are the moments when my Saginaw side comes out and I just want to clock ’em in the head. But I believe that would violate everything I just wrote about 🙂

Let’s at least agree to try everyday to do the simple respectful things.  Hold doors, smile, say hi (they wont bite), let someone go in front of you,  shake hands,  pick up what that person dropped, help them lift that heavy bag, give your seat up for a woman, serve someone.  It’s not that hard.  I know we can do it.  Lets change the respect of our society one person at a time.

God Bless

 

Life Leadership