Tag Archives: entrepreneurship

You Get What You Give

by on December 20, 2005 in Business, Career

I belong to a marketing listserve and a member posted an email he received from Chris Cardell, a marketing consultant. While Chris succumbs at times to a roaring bout of hubris in his message, he reminded me of a simple, golden principle: you get what you give. It’s a powerful idea and appropriate for this time of year. And if you think about it, giving and getting are never in direct proportion to a fixed ratio; we’ve all experienced the time where a small amount of giving yielded a far greater amount of joy, fulfillment, and solace.

Here’s one poignant snippets:

I made the prime purpose of my business to give, give, give. To add incredible value to the lives of people that I came into contact with. I gave everyone who was interested tons of great information on how to grow their business. I sent them information in the post. I emailed them. I chatted to them on the phone. Some became clients, some didn’t. It really didn’t matter because I knew I was making a difference. I stopped forever the "I can grow your business and solve your marketing problems – Why don’t you become my client" pitch. Within a few days people started contacting me asking me to work with them.

What had changed? Instead of trying to convince people that I could give them the knowledge that could solve their marketing problems – I just started giving them the knowledge anyway and let them decide for themselves. I switched my focus from what I wanted to what they wanted.

Take in that last sentence again. Play with it. Does it fit somewhere in your work right now? Someplace in your life? I think to my own experiences in business, in marketing, in designing a soulful career and realize that I have put way too much emphasis on me. The most difficult thing about having faith in the notion of continuous abundance is that you’re never sure if freely giving your ideas and knowledge will come back to help you. But then, that’s the real problem isn’t it? When we offer freebies, we tend to just give away the crumbs and hope its enough to entice new business or reup current clients. What if we also started to worry less about intellectual property and gave our best work away, as well? No strings attached.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. More than likely, someone else has had the same idea before. Think folks like Stephen Covey, Tom Peters, or Seth Godin are saying anything new or groundbreaking? Nah, not really. Yet, what makes them – and each of us – compelling to others is the quality and uniqueness of our own humanity.

When it comes to building a business of any size, clients and customers want to surround themselves with others who can make a true difference in their work and lives. In the end, its the relationship that matters. The key ingredient to any healthy relationship is a caring regard for another. So, practice freely giving and don’t be surprised if the return is far greater than anything you anticipated.

All The Cool Mediators Are Doing It

by on November 9, 2005 in Business

The reason I went on my trip to New England last week was to spend a day with a great chapter of my association and attend their annual conference. What I expected to do was talk with its leaders and members and share what we can do to further improve our organizational relationship. What I didn’t expect was to walk away with some pretty profound experiences.

In the past few months, I’ve come to learn about mediation as a practice and a profession. I’ve also gained a great deal of respect for those who mediate disputes (prior to landing at my current gig, I tried to mediate a staff conflict and discovered how difficult it is to do well). In a culture that seems to idolize the act of litigation, mediation is just a better way.

During the conference, I was able to attend a few sessions. One of the coolest was a workshop focused on helping practitioners use blogging as a marketing tool. It was led by three prominent bloggers in the field (which you really need to visit and read):

An added bonus was that Tammy Lenski, author of Strategic Conversations, was there, too. To be honest, it was the first time that I’ve managed to find myself in a room with more than two bloggers in it (including myself) so this workshop experience was particularly neat.

Folks like them and other legal bloggers like Arnie Herz at Legal Sanity give the world of law a truly good name.

Coaching As Learning; Testing The Waters Again

by on August 20, 2005 in Business, Work

Imaginactive_logoLisa Haneberg is asking for input on coaching for an upcoming book and while I was completing the survey, it got me thinking that I haven’t really written too much lately on the status of my own coaching practice. I mean, my practice was the main reason I started this blog almost a year ago.

You’ll notice that the ImaginActive logo that used to hang out on the left hand side is no longer there. The practice website has been taken down and I’ve disconnected the business phone line. It all is simply too expensive to maintain right now.

Yet, I’m not sure if ImaginActive Coaching Resources is truly dead; perhaps this is the time to get it kickstarted again. As I was answering some of Lisa’s questions, I remembered why I started the practice in the first place. I love coaching because it is a powerful tool for learning. For me, the personal sense of fulfillment and honor in being a participant in another individual’s transformative growth is, in itself, a huge reward.

Maybe there is a place for ImaginActive in my life right now. In addition to the internal workplace coaching I do in my current organization, I’m also thinking about how I can apply coaching principles in helping companies build better customer experiences. If you’re thinking that sounds like I’m working on another consulting angle, you could be right. Seems that once you get bit by the entrepreneurial bug, it kind of sticks with you.

I’ll just test the waters…if you are interested in:
1. coaching on livelihood integration (fully bringing together work, life, and all the other stuff).
2. building more dynamic customer experiences
send me an email or skype me. No obligations at this point, we can just see if there are potential relationships we can develop.

I Feel Like A Wind-up Toy

by on June 3, 2005 in Business, Career

Or more accurately, like one of those toy cars that you pull back and release to watch it zoom across the floor. Except, I feel like I’ve been pulled back and am just waiting to be released. What to do with all that pent-up kinetic energy? When you’re unemployed, you can get depressed about not working and bringing in a paycheck. Or you can experience a sort of manic tension where you want to unleash some really brilliant ideas because you have plenty of time (often too much) to read and reflect.

Yes, part of the "work" of being in the job hunt is looking for work: submitting resumes, networking, conducting info interviews, going on actual interviews, etc. The problem is that this involves a lot of waiting and I don’t like to wait. For me, having patience and waiting are two different concepts. Waiting is like handing power over to someone else. However, you can have patience and still be proactive in looking for opportunities to do something big.

I have something big in mind that’s just too important to keep tucked away. How do I implement it? I’m not sure. How does it integrate with my job hunting? Again, not sure but I think it can co-exist with whatever I find myself doing. What is it you ask? I hope to share it very soon.

When It Comes To Business Competition, Think British Open

by on May 27, 2005 in Business, Work

I’ve been thinking about the connections between competition in sports and the business world. Guess some of it has to do with my father’s past ordeal in trying to stay competitive against giants with what was once a thriving business. Might also have something to do with the fact that most automated response messages I get when I submit resumes talks about the "competitiveness of today’s job market." When I think of competition, my mind usually gravitates toward the model that focuses on beating your opponent. This is a model that I most clearly understood growing up when I played sports. Winning was all about dominating the other person or team (and sometimes competition gets rough – I played with blue-collar country boys and you better bring some muscle along with skills…I have a twice-broken nose to prove it).

Problem was that I didn’t really have much muscle and when you’re a skinny kid you need to find less brutal games. So my father introduced me to golf and I fell in love with it. When I was ready, I competed in local tournaments and played in leagues with men twice and triple my age. Funny thing is that the concept of competition in golf is very different from competition in most other sports like basketball, football, or greco-roman wrestling. In these latter activities, the focus is squarely on the opponent with the objective of stopping them from scoring and winning. In golf, the focus of competition is very different.

When it comes to competing in the business world today, the golf model offers a far more productive and powerful way to grow ourselves and our organizations.

I remember one of the first tournaments I played. In high school, the format you played in was a foursome with three three other schools. I got smoked not because I was a poor player and didn’t have ability, but because I spent more time worrying about the opponent and their game. I kept trying to outdrive the others and make spectacularly impressive shots. This went on for a few matches and all I could do was shake my head and wonder why I wasn’t beating my opponents. What only occurred to me after my coach took me out for a practice round was that my understanding of what it was to compete was working heavily against me. Instead, I needed to readjust my competitive drive and turn it inward.

In golf, you’re not squaring off directly against the other competitors in the field – you compete against yourself and the course. Its a sport where winning means mastering your own craft, not worrying about what the other player is doing. Their game is out of your control. It’s also a sport where the every changing environment challenges you to contend with it. This, too, is out of your control.

Where do the connections play out in the work world?

One instance that comes to mind is in the career search. The fact is the job market is competitive where hundreds of candidates vie for the same position. You can’t go and bludgeon every one of your opponents in order to win. You can’t worry about what talents they possess, what skills they offer, what experience they bring with them. The only thing that is in your control is YOU. Like in golf, you have to spend time practicing on your resume and for your interviews; when it’s time to play, you can only worry about your own game.

Another instance is a common one that takes place within the organization. Consider the scenario where there is an opportunity for internal promotion to a top company position. The larger the company, the more numerous the field of competitors. I’ve seen and heard stories about the rugby scrums that developed among colleagues. Yet, the more time that the individuals spent focused on whether ‘Tom down the hall’ or ‘Tina in marketing’ were gaining an upper hand, the less time they had developing themselves and their own game. In this scenario, what happens when you win? Who do you try to beat now? And how have you grown yourself in the process – any new accomplishments to report?

There are many more examples, but probably the granddaddy of all of them is how businesses go after market share. The old, tired model has companies on a seek and destroy mission to bludgeon their opponents by any means necessary. This is competition viewed through the lens of primal fear.The fear is that if you don’t get your enemies out of the way first, they’ll eventually destroy you. Again, focusing on the opposition means taking valuable time away from improving from within. We can’t maintain our attention in more than one place for very long.

The best companies understand that competition is there to help us improve, not kill us. Consider the golf world’s response to Tiger Woods. In the aftermath of his earliest wins when he dominated his opponents, other players understood that they had to raise the level of their own games. Golfers like Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson are now better players because of the effect that a newcomer had on their sport.

So, rather than condemning the competition, wishing it away, or trying to destroy it, welcome it. How else can we hope to improve who we are?