Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right. - Henry Ford

A great quote by Henry Ford. There are plenty of other quotes about the role of belief in people's ability to accomplish things. 

In my experience, they are 100% true.

Now, if you can somehow trick yourself into thinking you can fly, that's not what I'm talking about.

However, there are many situations I have found myself in where I found myself delaying something or not doing it because I thought "I don't know how". 

Even after 53 years of living, I still play that game with myself. I'm convinced my idea for a podcast is sound, but I put all sorts of things in front of it, because of fear and a goofy internal dialog. 

It was no different when I started Omega nearly 18 years ago. Did I have a clue? No, I did not. But I just kept pushing myself forward. One more call, one more item on the list, until I was just doing it. If there was an inflection point, I have no idea what it was. 

The moral of my story. The best way to gain the "think you can", is to do it. Fail, but try. Try again. With every increment of effort you'll get better, and your confidence will increase. 

If you want to have your own business, then break it into "bite-sized" pieces. One at a time, try and master them. The process of doing that gives you not only the skill to start a business - it also gives you the confidence, the belief. 

Perhaps you truly can't today, but with effort inability will go away.

Good enough never is.

   This weekend I was in Eskilstuna Sweden for a basketball tournament. So one night we ventured out for some food, in this case Chinese food at Ming Palace. Being a somewhat cautious person, I did some checking on TripAdvisor beforehand to see what was decent. The place in question was 4th on their list.

   As it turns out, 4th place was good enough to be pathetically mediocre. The food  was served quickly, and it wasn't over or under cooked. But it was devoid of any flavor. All served under the watchful eyes of the owner who never once inquired if we were enjoying, or had enjoyed, the food.

   How can that be? Well, I suppose that the standard of Eskilstuna isn't especially high, being a town of roughly 100,000 people, it isn't a likely spot for a top chef to hang their hat. Perhaps because of that, the restaurant had several customers who seemed to be contentedly grazing away. There isn't enough competition to force the Ming Palace to "up their game."

   But let's consider it from another perspective: there is NO competition. In other words, here is a place with a facility that is already open, and is actively serving clients. They are already doing 97% of the job it will take to make the place a star. All they have to do is put a little love into the food. If it was well seasoned, they'd probably be jammed with people. 

   At a minimum I'd bet a fair sum that an addition 5% effort would yield at  least a 20% increase in business. But I suspect it won't happen. They are probably puttering along OK, paying their bills and taking some time off every year. Business is good, or at least good enough. Right? Wrong.

   For now, the owners are safe. The little eco-system of this Swedish town is allowing them to survive on what they are doing. But what if one of their competitors decides to bring their "A" game? All of a sudden they might be having very little business and struggling to survive. They might even be forced to close.

   Such is the danger in playing the "safe" game of good enough. It provides an elusive veneer of comfort. They might be doing a little less business than before, but they can cut expenses, turn the heat down a bit. Slowly strangling a business that could thrive if someone would just look at it with a fresh set of eyes. 

   Don't be tempted to play the game of good enough. Bring your best game every day. Don't settle for being a little better than others. If the competition is poor, play hard anyhow. You never know when someone will show up ready to compete, so you need to be at your best. 

   Don't be lulled into complacency; good enough never is. 

 

You've got to risk the terrible and pathetic, in order to get to the graceful and elegant.

   If you haven't been bad at something recently, then you probably haven't tried anything new. The awkward bumbling of trying the unfamiliar is something many adults don't encounter very often. A pity, since the mastery of just about everything starts out badly. As toddlers we bumped and scraped our way to walking, which most of manage quite easily now. But often there are scars to show our early efforts.

   You've got to risk the terrible and pathetic, in order to get to the graceful and elegant. Nobody is born a ballet dancer or a piano player. Try, fail, try again, fail better, and so on, until there is something there worth showing off.

    In a world of rapid change, getting used to trying new things is pretty important. Fumbling with editing a video, sorting out a new app on your phone, wrestling with pronouncing a few words in an unfamiliar language are all the sorts of things you'd be advised to suffer through. Because you'll either be involved in the changing world, or left behind bewildered by it.

   So, go on - be terrible; it's the key to greatness. 

   

Success is taking what you know, and creating the best YOU that YOU can be.

   There are no Ivy League degrees on my wall, since I graduated from Miami-Dade community college. I also went to an average public high school, never took the SAT exam, and was frequently in trouble in school. Some pedigree. 

   My reason to tell you this is because I, like you, thought I would never be able to "make it". There was no point of reference for success in my family or education. I was on a track to be pretty darn average. But I decided not to accept that. You can make that same decision.

   Is everyone capable of anything? Probably not. But you are certainly capable of being much more than you currently are. You are capable of being a pretty amazing YOU. 

   That's the central idea behind my book, Alphabet Success. "Making it" isn't so much about having a remarkable IQ, or a previously unheard of invention. Success is taking what you know, and creating the best YOU that YOU can be.

   My message to you is, don't settle. Discover the most powerful version of you. I too thought successful people were "special". Perhaps, but it's a sort of special that is available in some way to everyone is who is willing to try, and keep on trying until the "special" happens. 

   The trying part? That part is up to you. 

Success is like Sausage??? Tim has lost his mind!

   What the heck? How on earth is success like sausage? What do you mean?

   Well, I think success is very similar to sausage. With apologies to non-meat eaters, sausage tastes pretty awesome, just like success. But there are some things that going into making sausage that might make it a bit less appetizing if you really think about it. Same as success. What do I mean by that?

   When I was running Omega, before the big payoff, I had a business with over 300 people, and a $2 million dollar line of credit. Just to make it interesting the bank had a lien against my house in the event something went wrong. Yep, the place where I lived with my kids. One bad move and boom, goodbye villa, hello streets. 

   This is no pity party. But it is important to see success for what it is. An arduous journey to get past seemingly neverending obstacles while fending off the competition along the way. It can be incredibly fun and enjoyable. Except when it isn't. And if you want success, you don't get a button to select "fun stuff only". You get the spoils, but you also are in for the headaches and risks.

   So yes, success is like sausage, you'd be surprised what goes into it. 

   But don't let that stop you from taking a bite. 

Outrunning the Monster...

  My parents were sticklers for punctuality. So as a kid, I concocted a motivational game to get myself home on time. I would imagine a huge, ugly monster chasing me through the streets of Akron, Ohio. I'll never forget that adrenalin-propelled rush of nearly flying over the pavement, feeling the monster's hot, rancid breath (I think it may actually have been the tire factories) while sprinting just ahead of his moldy grasp.

   Over the years, my monster has provided the motivation I've needed not only to succeed, but to thrive in the business world. He has served me well.

   His dogged pursuit is responsible for both my vocation and my avocation. The hairy beast chased me through college and graduate school, and finally into entrepreneurship. And I'm still running, but now for fitness; and not in Akron, but St. Petersburg, Florida.

   When I decided to start my own private-investigation firm in 1996, the monster breathed the specter of poverty. My new wife and I were living in a small apartment, whose rent, like everything else in our lives at the time, was paid by credit card. The monster helped me chase after business just to make sure we could eat and keep gas in the car and a roof over our heads.

   He also spewed the foul odor of self-doubt. I often lay awake at night wondering how a guy like me could possibly presume to run a business, especially against older, wiser (I thought!), and more experienced competition.

   But as I ran faster to escape the monster's clutches (he now sported a cheap, private-eye trench coat), I found myself learning a lot about how business operates. One particularly revealing lesson was that my "competition" was really only a little more gifted than my monster.

  For the most part, private investigators were what they always had been - retired police officers, special investigative unit (SIU) guys, or insurance adjustors. They often worked alone, used manual processes, and for sales collateral brandished their business cards.

   So while they clung to their Sam Spade model (and, for the most part, still do), I decided to innovate. While they snoozed between cases (feet up on the desk, of course), I learned about my marketplace - the claims and risk professionals who were purchasing investigative services. With the monster ever in the wings, I talked to people, read the trade journals, and found out what they really needed from an investigator.

   Then I decided that when fighting monsters, there is strength in numbers. So I took on partners, then employees. Every year, university criminal-justice programs were turning out legions of bright, energetic graduates, hungry for their first job and looking to learn the ways of surveillance. Why not hire them, pay them a decent salary, and teach them the ropes?

   And in order to keep my new employees working, why not find innovative ways of generating more business - by using what I had learned about our market, exhibiting at trade shows, producing sales literature that worked, by advertising, and by constantly generating new ideas for promoting the business? And why not self-publish a helpful booklet for clients about how surveillance works?

  We also made a commitment to using the hottest technology to run the business. (The monster was using none.) We outfitted our field investigators with the latest in video and wireless technology, trained them in its most efficient use, and sent them forth to generate revenue.

   But the real coup d'etat was the Internet. Our business is surveillance, which generally means video tapes accompanied by written reports. Our clients are claims and risk-management professionals, who spend entirely too much of their time on the telephone with claimants, physicians, attorneys and others.

   What better way to make surveillance information available to our harried and phone-weary clientele than to offer it on our secure Web site for them to peruse at their leisure - not only written reports but video snapshots and actual streaming video of the surveillance as well? Why rattle them with even more phone calls when e-mail and our Web site can provide them exactly what they need in a concise form, exactly when they need it? Why force them to store videotape cassettes when we can embed the video into the on-line record?

  Since we implemented the technology and juiced up the marketing, the monster has been quieter. He's not gone; in fact, I still hear his grunts when I look at our Web site and see how much remains to be done.

   And poverty is no longer the issue. The business, which now has grown to 85 employees, generated $4.1 million in revenues last year.

   But of course all those great investigators need to be paid, the office rent is due every month, and the technology doesn't come free.

   Where are my shoes? I can smell that ogre's breath right now.

(This was written by Robert DeRosa and myself in 2000.)

Don't Waste Your Effort...Really, Don't!

   Once upon a time I swam for the Miami-Dade Community College swim team. Perhaps a better way to phrase it, they didn't prevent me from practicing with them. That said, I was decent enough, and was fast enough to stay out of their way. It was a point of pride with me that I was there, and I trained HARD!

   You might think I would have developed a bit of insight after having to learn how to swim properly at the age of 23. Previously, I couldn't even get my face in the water. But a few sessions with a friend that had a swimming background put me on the path to swimming quasi-normally.

   One week we "hosted" the University of Miami swim team, as their pool was being renovated. This was a great opportunity as UM had some potential Olympians on their team. Swimming next to them was going to be a treat. A chance to measure oneself against greatness. Well, after a brief comparison I was ready to drop the idea of measuring anything.

   The first time I set off next to one of the team, I was dumbfounded. Was the guy being pulled by a jet ski? I redoubled my effort. This made me marginally faster, and massively exhausted. He, on the other hand, appeared to be having a nice leisurely dip. ARRGGGHH. My only hope was to be less embarrassed over a short distance. So much for training HARD.

   Had I been wasting my time? No, I had gotten much better than before, and the training had made a difference. But, if my goal was to diminish the gap between myself and the UM swimmers, I knew pretty much instantly that MORE TRAINING was NOT the answer.

   This leads me to my point. Effort is great. But effort without great technique can be wasteful, and potentially damaging. Too often the standard motivational cry is to TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT. Good luck with that. My experience is that while clearly motivation is important, as you approach higher levels of competition, how you try is likely more important than how hard you try.

   When you want approach the top of a sport or field of endeavor, pretty much everybody is motivated. In a swim competition you need only look around the pool to see that everyone is very fit. Past that point the biggest differences are down to technique.

   To improve myself I solicited a member of the UM team to train me. While I never got anything close to good enough to compete with them, I made amazing progress in improving my own times. To do this, I had to take a step back and evaluate my approach. By being objective, I knew I was in very good condition, had an excellent diet, and was putting forth an tremendous effort. Trying harder would have been pointless.

   Thus, when I say "Don't Waste Your Effort" I mean it literally. Put forth an effort, absolutely. But be sure you are putting forth the right effort. In a race, nobody cares about your horsepower, they care about your speed. By putting your effort to translating horsepower to output, you won't waste your effort. You'll get more out of doing less.

   That's the right way to apply effort.