Yesterday is dust, tomorrow a dream. Our gift is now.

My daughter called me earlier this month, but I let it go to voice mail. I was busy. I didn't have time to chit chat.

That's kind of a pattern for me. I duck and weave through each day based on my priorities, deciding who and what gets through to me. If there's a lot of work to do, I ignore all but the most frantic requests.

If I didn't do that, I'd be overrun with people demanding too much of my time. How would I get anything done?

Sometimes I'm even like that on vacation. Because my business is online, I feel an obligation to get some work done, even when I've traveled quite a distance to be "on vacation". 

Like being in Croatia this summer and blowing off a basketball game to do something I don't even remember on the the computer. It probably wasn't really that important. Maybe I just wanted to seem busy.

This weekend, I got a bit of a kick. Nothing happened to me, or my family. For that, I'm grateful.

But I was on Facebook (where else, right?) and was just poking along and saw a friend had posted an update. I had to read it twice. I was confused. His son had died. Gone. Less than 30 years old. 

My immediate reaction was disbelief. Come on. I know that kid. He's a great guy. That's a guy that loves music. He has an awesome smile. There's a ton of things he's doing right now. 

But that's not going to happen now. That's ended. There's no turning back the page. 

My heart breaks for my friend and his family. How they'll rebuild their lives with that huge piece missing. I doubt anything will ever fill that hole. It's too big. 

They'll go on, as we all do. Obligations to be met, things to tend to. The daily ebb and flow of life washing over them.

But I know for myself, something burned into my mind when I saw that. How wrong I have been in the allocation of my time. 

Maybe I'm terrible for turning the event to thinking of my own family, but I couldn't help reflect on how I've put projects in front of people so often. It would crush me to be held to account for it right now.

And so, I made a promise to myself. To be a little wiser in how I spend my time. Not to be so quick to duck phone calls from people. Especially my kids. 

Last night the phone rang. It was my daughter. She gave me the gift of an hour together with her. 

Every word was a little clearer, every feeling more delicious. She spoke, and I consumed. 

Maybe that's what that huge hole is for. The one my friend's son left behind. It's a window into the purpose of our existence. It's not to be the one with the most money, or the biggest house. Your heart can only be filled with love. Everything else leaks away. 

Life is full of obstacles, don't create your own.

There are a ton of quotes about setting goals in the stars, and hitting the moon, etc...and while they might provide some momentary inspiration, I think it's a poor strategy for actually reaching a goal.

Why?

Well, my friend Jason Surfrapp just wrote an article about a fitness program that he tried out, that illustrates the danger of pushing people into programs of radical change. In short, when it's hard to get a feeling of success, it takes much more will power than most people can muster to stay in the game.

The psychology of this is pretty simple. If something is only providing pain, and no pleasure, it's just a matter of time before you will abandon it. Who wants to work hard to be presented repeatedly with a message of "You failed"?

Sure, failure is part of any path of growth. But it shouldn't be built in to what you're doing. Whatever your long-term goal is, be sure the path to get there is built on a highway of simple successes. Failure may occur, but it shouldn't be designed into your program.

To be clear, I think there is a major distinction between your overall goal, and your plan (mini-goals) to get there. Difficult goal? Awesome. Daunting path? Questionable.

Maybe your goal is to run a marathon. But at present you can only walk down the block. Make your first mini-goals to walk two, then three, etc. If you're going to try to go from walking a block to running a marathon, which is an aggressive goal, it's just silly to make your program aggressive too.

When you try to do too much too soon, you're too likely to end up frustrated and back to your old ways. Conversely, success begets success.

In recent article by James Altucher, about what he learned from interviewing Tony Robbins, this point is made crystal clear. The idea of bring the target closer. It refers to Tony training the US Army on how to improve it's marksmanship.

By starting with the target at close range, the soldiers got confidence in hitting it. Slowly it was moved further and further away, until they were exhibiting outstanding shooting from a distance. But that success was built on the simple victories of shooting from close up.

Design your own goals in the same way. Feel free to make your overall goal audacious, so long as your path to getting there is reasonable. There will be enough obstacles to side track you, don't let your own plan be one of them.

Success is normally found in a pile of mistakes...

We usually see success when it's been polished up a little like a diamond. It's pretty, and everyone wants it. That's where the problem comes for those seeking success. Often they've been deluded by appearances that success starts out looking like the finished product.

Nope. Success, as I have written before, is messy. You'll bump into things, make mistakes that'll have you cringing with embarrassment at times. You'll waste time on dumb ideas, get distracted, and waste more time. But, that's all part of the journey. 

Eventually you'll be getting better at what you are doing. You'll look in your pile of mistakes and see some flecks of gold, or diamonds. You'll figure how you got them, and start improving the way you work. In time, you'll have a great understanding of what you are doing, and progress will come much easier. More gold and diamonds. Nice.

Just to give you an example, when I was trying to grow my old investigative business, we went through many iterations of trying to keep up with the dictated reports that were submitted by investigators. This was expensive due to the overnighting of tapes, and on occasion we had to spend a ton of time looking for a missing tape. Then a woman who was working transcribing tapes asked why I didn't have a medical dictation system.

The reason? I didn't know what it was. But the system allowed all that dictation to be done via telephone every night. No more audio tapes, no more daily inbound express packages. In retrospect it seemed crazy we hadn't looked into it. But we didn't know such systems existed. But fixing that mistake was easily worth over a $100k per year. A nice additional profit.

You can improve the process by doing plenty of studying beforehand, but as my example illustrates, you'll probably still screw up. That's good. Because your success is going to be in that pile of mistakes. Just keep looking. 

Good luck!

Real failure isn't a moment in time, it's an attitude in your mind.

In the movies, things are often painted with a nice black or white brush. We know what winning looks like, and we know what losing looks like. Success and failure are properly labeled so we can easily recognize them.

In real life, we might imagine such labels exist, but the reality is that they don't. Failure and success are often two different perspectives on an event. And even those perspectives are subject to change over time. 

For example, there was a company called Blue Ribbon Sports, known better today as Nike. In 1971, they were a tiny business that was losing their distributorship for ASICS running shoes in the USA. This effectively put them out of business. They had no product to sell. In that moment, it would be easy to look at this event and declare it failure. 

But founder Phil Knight managed to find someone to manufacture a new design, to create their own product - later known as Nike. If they had NOT lost the distributorship, they may have carried on as a distributor. While there's nothing especially wrong with that, it would have meant that you'd have never heard "Just Do It" as there would be no Nike. There's no way that a distributor would have the brand equity that Nike does. In essence, losing the distributorship was a major success. But it took a bit of time to see that. Most importantly, it took the will to keep going.

Such is the nature of much failure and success. What looks good in a given moment may not stand the test of time. Conversely, what looks like a complete failure today can be the genesis of a remarkable success. Keep that in mind before you become too downcast over a setback. Real failure isn't a moment in time, it's an attitude in your mind. Stay positive and just keep looking.

Why blogging every day is a risky, goofy idea.

"You should blog every day"

This is a piece of advice I hear pretty frequently that I think is goofy. 

Look, there's no question that developing something of a rhythm with readers is important. But the idea that you'll have something worthwhile to say every day is flawed. 

If you churn out some garbage just to make your deadline, you're violating the trust of your readers. And as a content creator, trust is about all you've got. Why would you try to create an expectation of daily content when you may be having trouble knocking out a weekly blog?

If, someone shows up to read your blog for the first time and you're content that day is weak, what makes you think they'll come back for more? Isn't it a better idea to develop compelling content weekly? Write an article based on questions you see coming in, and then refine it over a week to make it a real value add for readers. 

There's obviously no set recipe for success in anything. But if you want people to flock to your content, you'd better take the time to let it ferment, get edited, and released when it is ready to be savored by readers. Once it's out of the "kitchen" you'll be judged by it's merit and quality.

Personally, I blog when I have the time to write something I think is worthwhile. Perhaps most folks would procrastinate. I'd actually love to do something daily, but if I'm too busy with other things, on holiday or just am throwing up rubbish ideas, I'd prefer to wait. That's my duty to you, the reader. 

But what do y'all think? Is more better? Is frequency a concern? Please let me know your thoughts.

All the best from sunny Poland.

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. 

 

Don't worry about your pride, worry about your principles.

   Just about fifteen years ago I held my first press conference. It was at RIMS, which is an insurance conference my old business attended every year.

   Everything was carefully coordinated, there was catering, and a wonderful room near the entrance so it would be easy for the media to attend. Except they didn't. Exactly one journalist was there. If I hadn't been an advertiser in their publication, the number would have dropped to precisely zero.

  Unsurprisingly my initial reaction was to be a bit depressed. Thankfully I quickly reframed the incident in my mind. Business was strong, my family was good, my health was excellent, and furthermore, I hadn't compromised myself in any way to pull off the event. Thus, there was nothing to be ashamed of in the lack of attendees.

   It illustrated a very important point: principles matter, pride doesn't. Valuing your principles means doing things in the right way, being honest, sticking to your commitments even when it is painful to do so. Pride revolves more around feelings. Principles are fixed, pride is fickle.

   So when you are considering the success or failure of a situation, evaluate your adherence to principles rather than your sense of pride. Why does that matter?

   When we are afraid of failing, that's usually our pride talking. Our worry over who is going to roll their eyes at our efforts, or ridicule our performance. By that standard, my first press conference was a dismal failure. But was it?

   Even though there was virtually nobody there, I learned some valuable lessons (always book too small a room...crowded always is more intriguing than empty). There's more, but that alone was enough to make it worthwhile.

  Now, I always try to remember whenever I feel fear creeping up: Don't worry about your pride, worry about your principles. 

A tale of scale.

  In the past four years I have had the need to sell two houses. One in Stockholm, and the other in Florida. One sold, the other didn't. This is a tale of scale.

  To many people the image of Sweden is probably of a chilly place with somewhat grumpy socialists marching across the frozen landscape. Florida by contrast is a wonderland of palm trees and happiness. But I digress...

  When I contacted my broker in Sweden, he came by, we discussed the market conditions (a bit mediocre in 2010) and signed an agreement. Since I was on the road a bit we arranged for the house to be shown in my absence. 

   In Florida, I also contacted a broker I knew and arranged for the house to be listed. Market conditions were a bit better in 2012, so I was optimistic about the prospects for the house. This house was also being sold with me being out of town.

   Two houses, both in desirable settings, were being sold in roughly the same manner, at least from my perspective as the seller. 

   Where things became very very different was in the approach of the broker. 

   My broker in Stockholm takes very few houses to sell. But they ALL get sold. He puts his time and effort into it, and the listings are exclusive to him. 

   He took a decidedly average house in a nice suburb and had it sold well above our expected final price within a matter of a few weeks. 

  Why? Because he is focused on very few things professionally. He takes in listings which he is confident he can sell, and then puts his efforts into making that happen. In this case he even, at his own expense, detailed the property. 

   By contrast, the broker in Florida has many many listings, all in the MLS. He's a good, hard-working guy, but he's focusing on running his business, rather than the individual listings his firm has.. His money is in having enough inventory that some houses move and they take a cut. He is, in a word, scaling. 

   In fairness, they did put some effort into it. But the focus of the business is too spread out. The effort to market the house was just not sufficient. It sat and sat, until the market just sort of forgot about it and I had it removed from the market after several months.

   The moral of the story, is that while scale might sound very appealing, it doesn't work for all businesses. For me as a client, I was much better looked after by my broker in Sweden. 

   Client's don't care about your market share, or your reach. The internet reaches everyone. We want to be looked after. In a business involving such an intrusive process as selling a home, being another number feels lousy. Having the home not sell, worse.

   I even wonder if scales works for the big broker. The smaller operation is less visible, but also less stressful, highly profitable (virtually no overhead) and he has the luxury of turning away business. The larger operation is a machine with a lot of moving parts. All of which must be kept working for the business to survive.

   In businesses that are totally data driven, with wafer thin margins, scale is a necessity. But in businesses where humans matter scale can be a stressful, counterproductive mistake. 

   To me, the equation looks pretty simple. Sometimes scale just doesn't work. Grow at your peril.

Forget your weaknesses, increase your strengths.

  We get the message over and over, "work on your weaknesses". Nonsense. Do you think Michael Jordan should have studied Spanish instead of practicing basketball? Or maybe Michelangelo should have spend time learning more about banking from the Medici family? Maybe, or more likely, probably not.

   When I was in high school, my parents were very keen for me to study engineering. A fine idea, except for the fact that I wasn't even remotely interested in it. I liked business, and frankly, making money. Learning more about how airplanes stayed aloft wasn't in my circle of interests. 

   Now to listen to many gurus, I should have worked on my weaknesses. Why? So I could be bored and disenchanted with school? Possibly knowing more about certain things would have served me in some way. Except I didn't care then, and I don't care now. I can buy the books, but I'll always read something else ahead of them, and they'll sit unread for the rest of my days.

   I've taken the liberty of indulging my strengths. As a result, I've had a very nice business career, and a ton of fun. It's not to say that I haven't done considerable learning and growing along the way, but I think pushing myself into directions I wasn't interested in would have done pretty much nothing for me. 

   Truth be told, if you want to be really amazing at something it takes a focused effort. I'm no "super star" but I've done well, and I don't think it would have happened without having been extremely focused on business. Because I had a keen interest from an early age.

   Furthermore, I could read something every day and not come close to knowing everything about the things I am interested in within my field. You just keep banging away trying to stay a few steps ahead of the competition. 

   If you look at the top people in virtually every field, they got there through a keen focus on one item. Yo Yo Ma is an amazing cellist, Warren Buffet is a remarkable investor, Wayne Gretzky was a phenomenal hockey player. Focus, focus, focus. 

  Given the limited amount of time available to all of us, I say focus on your strengths. It's enough work just to maximize them.

Success occurs in a blinding flash of the obvious.

   Many people imagine that there are some secret handshakes and special software programs that lead some people to be more successful than others. In some instances, there is probably some amazing alchemy that occurs and a new business and fortune are born. I've never seen it, but it's the stuff of legend.

   But, on the side of town where the other 99.9% of business is conducted, it is the obvious that delivers success. Being completely committed, saying thank you, keeping notes, all the sort of things which would appear routine. Maybe they should be, but they aren't. People goof up all the time on the most elementary issues. Probably because they don't seem to require training and instruction, so they're just assumed to be "handled." Nope. It doesn't happen.

   Because everybody thinks they'll happen, they don't. The note about the clients' sons karate tournament doesn't get jotted down, the handwritten thank you for an order is carelessly forgotten. The bathroom someone forgets to clean. All seemingly trivial, but they aren't. These are the fundamental levels you have to execute on to win.

   Sure it's awesome to have a new way to analyze client data, to have a new gizmo that goes "bing". But if you don't execute on the basics, they're won't be any data to analyze. Your competition will do a better job on what clients actually care about, and walk away with what you long assumed to be yours.

   A friend of mine told me after I wrote 'Alphabet Success', "Tim, most of this stuff is common sense." to which he added, "I have put the nine acronyms on the wall so I don't forget them". Perhaps not so common after all.

   It's not that I'm a genius. Quite the contrary. But in watching sport teams, and businesses and people I observed one common phenomena about success. The basics, the obvious things, are what matter. 

   Care about people both inside and outside the business, make it easy for staff to do the important work, be forever grateful to everyone who buys from you, to people for showing up for work, for all the key elements of your business. Say what you'll do and then do that! 

   Through whatever method possible, be sure you are fundamentally sound on the "obvious" before embarking on a quest for nuance. The right logo won't help a crappy company. A good looking suit won't overcome a lack of knowledge. 

  What will make you successful won't be the topic of a TV series, it won't be retold as a fireside tale by teenage campers, and it's not going to be the subject of a spell-binding novel. 

   Success occurs in a blinding flash of the obvious. Now go see how "obvious" you can be.


NOTE: The phrase "blinding flash of the obvious" was lovingly stolen from Tom Peters. Because it was the obvious thing to do...Thanks Tom.

You only pay for the kindness you don't give.

   John, an insurance salesman walked into the offices of a medium-sized construction firm. He'd been looking forward to this meeting, as he'd always wanted to get their business. He had heard the company had been around for many years.

   The older woman at the desk asked if she could help him and he confidently blurted out, "I have an appointment with Mike, the owner." She replied, "It'll just be a minute, please have a seat." More or less ignoring her he stood looking out the window of the office. She then remarked, "Mike's on his way up." He silently continued looking out the window, thinking about the commissions he'd make on this sale and that it'd be a great down payment on a new Porsche.

   Mike arrived, and invited the salesman to his office. They got along quite well, and shared stories about some of their mutual acquaintances. John then gave a flawless pitch on the benefits of obtaining insurance through his firm. Mike was clearly impressed. He told John that they'd be very interested in his offerings.

   Just then, Mike's phone rang. He answered, and just stood listening. "Right, right. OK, I see." he quietly said. He then hung up the phone, and turned to John. "I think we're going to have to pass John." he informed him. John was stunned. Everything had gone so perfectly. He then asked Mike, "I thought you were interested. What happened?" 

   Mike then replied, "The woman at the front desk is my mother. She's been the owner of the company since my father died years ago. She told me you ignored her and informed me that I could not, under any circumstances, buy anything from you." John recalled his casual indifference with deep regret. He started to say, "But, Mike, I didn't..." John cut him off, saying, "There's nothing left to say, thanks for stopping by."

   He then silently escorted him to the door.

   Moral: You only pay for the kindness you don't give. 

   Alphabet Success, your personal step-ladder to success.  To buy, click here. 

Humanity is underrated, but it outperforms.

 A few years ago I was at Joe's Stone Crab on Miami Beach. A friend and I were sitting at the bar waiting for a table, as Joe's doesn't take reservations. So we chatted at the noisy bar and had a couple of drinks. 

  After a while the wait seemed to be a bit too long, even for Joe's which can be a little slow in getting around to seating you. Aside from a few serious Miami players, everybody waits, so it's just part of going there. That said, I decided to ask the maitre d' for an estimate of when our table would be ready. 

   Once I managed to break through the throngs of people I got the maitre d's attention and we located my name on the list. Upon which he informed me, "I called your name about ten minutes ago."  Having no reason to doubt him, I said, "Oh, well I guess I didn't hear you. Do we have to start over? What's the process?" While I didn't want to sit another ninety minutes, there was no point being pushy with someone who deals with pushy people in 15 second intervals.

   He looked at me for a second, and then said, "just stand over there" and motioned to the side of the vestibule. We did as instructed. Within seconds we were whisked away by "Bones" who is the a long-time fixture at Joe's. He took us to a nice table, handed us menus, thanked us and departed. The perusal of the menus began.

    Within a minute or two our waiter arrived and asked about our drink order. We asked for a couple glasses of white wine as well as some water. A few minutes later the waiter returned with a bottle of white wine. I mentioned we had just wanted a couple of glasses. He then explained that the wine had been sent to us by the maitre d. I was floored. I couldn't imagine why.

   After inquiring, Bones returned and explained, "We have people miss the call for their table all the time, and it ends up with an argument and them making a fuss. You were so calm and respectful, we just wanted to say thank you." Wow! It still floors me. What an impression.

   Here it is, over ten years later, with over thirty years of patronizing the restaurant and that's still my defining moment at Joe's. Many great dinners, and fun times, but that memory is right at the top of the heap. It's the reason I still go there every time I am back in Miami, and will continue to do so. 

   The point is that a single gesture, made with such humanity, has incredible power. Joe's is a Miami Beach institution. If I stopped visiting, I don't think there would be a noticeable difference in their revenues. But it is because they have that humanity that the restaurant continues to be "the place" to for anniversaries and birthdays in Miami. Your customers aren't units, they're people. When you relate to them as people, that makes a pretty huge impact. 

  When you're planning for success, don't forget the simple premise that people matter greatly. In fact, they probably matter much more than many more "sexy" ideas. 

   Humanity is underrated, but it outperforms.

Inspiration gives you a start, endurance gives you a victory.

   We all love an exciting new idea. Something that gets us PUMPED UP! The adrenaline gets flowing, and we're ready for action. This seems like the moment when our future is decided. Well kind of, but not really.

   Such moments are not all that rare, and if that were the magic elixir for success, there would be a whole lot more of it happening. If inspired people all went out and remade the world, the place would look much different I suspect. 

   What happens is people get really fired up, and then most of them calm down and go back to what they were doing before. There are obviously exceptions but, in general, the inertia of life pulls them back into their old pattern of behavior. 

   There's a second element, which is essential to make inspiration more than a wisp of thinking that passes by, which is endurance. Once inspired, if we begin working toward realizing the idea in our mind, and keep on working toward it relentlessly, then some magic happens. We start moving toward what we had previously only imagined.

   I'm not aware of any success stories where inspiration alone did the job. You need a large quantity of endurance to make success out of inspiration. Endurance doesn't make for a great headline or spectator sport. It's the slow grind late at night, throwing out mistakes and trying again and again. Trying over and over to translate inspiration to reality. 

   That's the nature of success. There is the glory of the idea which makes for compelling copy and a dramatic storyline. The rest of the process can be tedious, boring and at times, heartbreaking. It's not easy to make something new appear in the world. But there are few shortcuts, it's just putting in the time and slogging away until the idea starts to come together.

   Like I said: Inspiration gives you a start, endurance gives you a victory.



    Alphabet Success, your personal step-ladder to success.  To buy, click here. 

Hey, gotta a few minutes? The incredible force of consistent action.

   If you ever decided to join a gym, and were a little too "excited" the first day, you have probably experienced the difficult reality that you can't change a few years of idleness with an hour of spirited exercise. Not to mention discovering muscles you had forgotten about.

   A better, longer lasting approach is to bring new habits into your life that are a change, but not such a dramatic one that you may not stick with it. Because sticking with it is what will get you to your goal. 

   It could be writing for ten minutes, or walking around the block. Pick something you won't need to do much to put into your schedule. Something "bite sized" that moves you toward your goal.

   Just be sure that whatever it is, you do it every day, without fail for about a month. By then you'll be on cruise control. It will be automatic. While you may not achieve your goal in that month, you will likely have made progress toward it. You can always upgrade your efforts as you go along. But just keep at it.

   Excitement is no match for persistence in achieving goals

   Best wishes! This approach has worked for me, I hope it works for you too. 
 

The biggest obstacle to your success is in your mind.

   Occasionally I get involved in conversations about the means by which people get ahead in life. While I am quite aware there are some seriously corrupt people in the world, the majority of my high achievement friends got there the old fashioned way. Hard, persistent, intelligent work and a bit of luck.

   The reason I'm bothering to write about this is that the idea that you have to sell your soul and be corrupt is both false and disempowering. It sends a message that getting ahead is impossible without some sort of magic contact list coupled with a dearth of ethics. In fact, I'd say the opposite is true, and now more than ever.

   The flattening of the barriers to communicate about a product or service, along with the myriad of outsourcing opportunities have allowed a great number of new entrants into most markets. There is so much niche territory at the edges of markets that big companies simply cannot manage to keep up with their nimble competition. Opportunity abounds.

   Is it easy to succeed? Nope. But it is completely possible, and the barriers to entry for many fields are lower than ever. Don't be misled. Most markets are open to people with the ability to use some empathy and apply that into a meaningful market offering. No special contacts, and no secret handshakes are required.

  Believe in yourself and make a difference. The only thing holding you back, is you.

Never give up your right to be wrong, and be sure to give others that right too.

   Why would we want the right to be wrong? Don't we want the right to be right? No, if the world is going to move forward, we want the right to be amazingly wrong. 

   Imagine if the rule for learning to walk was pass or fail. If you could not walk at the right moment, you were fitted with leg braces and sent off - consigned to the label of "non-walker" forever. Perhaps this seems an exaggeration. But we do this with people all the time. 

   The key to mastery is effort and time. For some, mastery takes longer. But the end result may actually be superior expertise compared to the person for whom it came easily. Why? Because we learn from our mistakes. All those blunders provide an information set on what to do in the future.

   For the best levels of expertise we need to embrace more than one path to success. We can't just pick the front runners early and "label" the rest as incapable. But, we like our human filing cabinets. This person is one of "these", that person is one of "those". It's neat and clean. Except when it's us being stuck into a particular drawer or onto a certain shelf.

   Because in our heart we know it's rubbish. The whole reason we like the "filing cabinets" is because figuring people out is messy. Many of us are more bright than our transcript lets on. Most of us have a topic we are interested in, but are too timid to pursue. So we'd under perform on knowledge but over perform on interest.

  It's worth it to evaluate each other with greater depth. In a world going shallow, go deep. Be willing to accept mistakes from both yourself and others. Pursue mastery right through a barrage of errors. Everytime we fail we get a bit better. 

  Suddenly we can be better than the best, a breakthrough occurs and we are soaring. After sloppy results and discouraging reviews, we jump ahead. We discover something new that benefits the world. A moment which requires our patience and that of those around us.

  Never give up. Never give up your right to be wrong, and be sure to give others that right too.

Goals should be like bread. Baked fresh daily.

   Hi there!

  Forget about what happened before, start fresh now...

  Here are a few tips on making something happen in (the remaining nine months of) 2014. 

  Some folks will disagree with my suggestions, but tough tiddliwinks.

  How to set goals, the quick version:

   1. Keep it simple, measurable, and in spite of the "soar with eagles" chatter, within reasonable grasp. Complexity messes up your thinking, measurement is essential, and by finding some things you can get done with a modest effort, you can always reset your target with the confidence gained from round one.

   2. Find a way to give your goals some synergy. Losing weight? How about a 5k run as another goal? The training will help with your other goal of losing weight. Losing weight will make running easier. Or if you want to read more, then add joining a book club. You get the idea. 

   3. Write it down! Commit it to a friend! - Everyone says this. Why? Because it works. Writing it down makes you internalize it. It's harder to forget. If you put it somewhere (like your calendar) it will keep staring you in the face. Good. Tell a friend too. They can also stare you in the face! If you have someone who will give you a friendly nudge, take advantage of it. Big help.

  4.  Don't be too rigid. Things go wrong. Adjust and move on. Rigid thinking is what puts goals on the shelf for another year. Relax a bit and if something goes wrong, dust yourself off, adjust and keep plodding along. You'll make it!

   5. Whatever you do - this is critical. Have fun. The more fun your goals are to reach, and the more fun you inject into the mindset, the more likely you'll make it happen. Fun: have it!

   Get your PEN and PAPER. Make it happen. Don't clean a drawer. Don't have a bagel. Move your life in a better direction for (the rest of) 2014. 

   Have fun. Really. Lot's of fun.

   Happy (almost) New Year.

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. 

A one word suggestion for improving your life? LISTEN.

  When I was a boy, I used to cut grass in the summers to make extra money. One of my clients was my father. On a pretty routine basis I'd cut the grass (what I thought I was hired to do) only to have my father dissect the job with his engineering mindset (I imagined him with a T-square examining the edges). In short, he was disappointed, and I was annoyed. 

   A classic case of poor agreement on expectations. To me "cut the grass" meant running the mower over the yard to reduce the general height of the lawn. To my father "cut the grass" meant running the mower over the yard until it looked like a putting green. Nobody was right or wrong. Just badly matched ideas of the job in question.

   I hadn't listened well, and he'd fallen short in explaining. Thus, the problem.

   That listening could fail so completely in such a rudimentary task is illustrative of the problems we all encounter in trying to foster meaningful clear communication. My use of lawn cutting is deliberate; many of our daily communications are on much more complex topics.

   This could be a complete book (and perhaps that's a thought) so let me outline a few suggestions:

   1) Listening requires more than remaining quiet. If you aren't positive you understand, even by a whisper of a hint, ask for clarification. 
   
   2) The more specific the communication, the less room for misunderstanding. Over- communicating is faster than reworking. (Even when lawn cutting!)
   
   3) Listening includes CULTURE.  Active listening is a CULTURE. A valuable one at that.
   
   4) Listening includes demonstrating your comprehension by using some of what you hear in your plans. Even if the information is marginal, the payback for using a suggestion is in opening the pipeline for future information and suggestions.

  5) Be sure you are truly open to ideas and comments. When people are busy calibrating their message to accommodate your "demanding personality", you may lose the point. 

  6) Remember, often the most important message is the one left unspoken.

   In the end, my father and I sorted things out. Once I understood clearly what he wanted, I increased my price 250%. After an initial hesitation he accepted. I got more spending money, and he got his putting green. 

   Listening is a profitable, sanity preserving, exercise that everyone should actively practice on a daily basis. Of course, listening isn't mandatory, but neither is success. 

PS - Tip of the hat to Tom Peters for getting me fired up about this. Thank you sir. 

Ideas are great. Except when they're not.

   Back when I was running Omega I had a brilliant idea. If we offered recorded statements on our investigations, we'd pick up a nice chuck of extra revenue and profit on many of the assignments we got. I did my best "idiots math". If we only get assignments on 20% of the cases, it will be so awesome, because 20% x the number of investigations x the $$$ for each statement is BIG MONEY. Duhhh. 

   In fairness (to me of course) this was a line of business related to what we did (investigations) and would be pretty easy to sell to our clients. The problem was pretty simple. We sucked at doing recorded statements. Add to that a complete lack of a coherent training program, as well as no real software tools to monitor quality, and you have a classic business screw up. 

   Obviously we should have had all those pieces in place BEFORE we launched. But we were blinded by overconfidence and seduced by the money. Everyone, including some very smart people (not me) were all on board for this idea. In the heat of the moment (or the meeting) it's easy to let enthusiasm get the better of you. People truly assume someone is thinking about the downside, unless nobody is, which can easily happen.

   A secondary screw up is the attention this diverted from what we were already expert in, surveillance. We could crank out surveillance. We had rapid quality recruiting, awesome training, great investigators, superb software. We had it all. Ramp up the demand for it, and we'd meet it. 

   If we'd devoted our time to selling more of what we were good at, we would not have failed. We'd have made an almost certain increase in both sales and profits. So why didn't we? 

   We were looking for adventure. Excitement. The thought of simply expanding our existing offerings was subconsciously boring. So boring that it wasn't discussed. Conversely the new business was so exciting, we assumed our competence would extend through osmosis to this new line of work. WRONG.

   From small businesses to large businesses this situation is common. People selling B2B decide consumers would be such better clients...or vice versa. The ease with which we drift from our circle of competence is frightening. You might ask why I didn't know better. I thought I did. Really. I wasn't THAT guy. 

   The lesson to me is very clear. Stick with what you know until sticking is stupid. Tread into new waters with the absolute greatest trepidation. There will be opportunities, and they should be taken advantage of, but put someone in charge of figuring out why you're wrong. Really. Make it someone's assignment to shoot a torpedo in any new idea you have. 

   While I agree with, and frequently post quotes about, the thinking that it is trying things and making mistakes that lead us to grow, it's good to balance that with some deliberation and caution. There is an exhilaration of the "new" that is very seductive. So it's important to remember: Ideas are great. Except when they're not.