The problem is YOU. (Most of the time)

To paraphrase Jay-Z on problems, I got 99 of them but the bitch ain't one.

Problems are all around us. They disguise themselves in Halloween costumes pretending to be something they are not. They are constantly there.

As soon as I think I'm getting rid of one problem, another presents itself.

It's easy to say, "I've got no problems". Essentially, we all have them in varying degrees. If we're honest with ourselves, we know that.

What we focus on, expands. So it's a fine line between empowering a problem and dealing with it.

All that said, dealing with our problems is extremely difficult. As Einstein is quoted, "The solution to a problem cannot be found with the same level of thinking that created it".

Our problems are derivatives of our thoughts, actions, and beliefs. To fix a problem, we need to change our thoughts, actions and beliefs.

The stuff that needs to change does not change easily. It takes real work. So most take the easy road. They blame other people for their problems.

In my experience there are two types of problems:
1. Those we create.
2. Those we are given.

It's only the second one, we can blame someone else. The given problems are rare. They are things beyond our control, occurring in nature, like death, natural disasters, freak accidents.

Most of our problems are created by us. It's easier to blame others, so we do.
To use Pareto's Principle, 80% of the problems we create are based on 20% of our actions.

What actions are you doing to cause the problems in your life?
In what ways do you need to change to fix those problems?

The ones we create are solved by changing our thinking.
The ones we are given are solved by changing our relationships.

The first one is hardest because we need to change ourselves.
The second one is easy.

PS. Have you ever noticed the rate of divorce among divorced couples? The divorced couples I know, who remarry, have a much higher incidence to divorce again. Thinking the problems have to be with the other person, the divorcee continues to look for the perfect partner only to realize, after a second failed marriage, they are far from it.

Words that don't matter anymore

There was probably a time when words like quality, honest and reliable mattered. But I doubt it.

My dad taught me to be wary of those who said they were honest. If they feel they have to say it, they probably aren't.

There are a bunch of words that don't matter anymore: quality, honest, reliable, professional, trustworthy, service oriented, experienced, dedicated, capable, respectful, and caring are just a few that come to mind.

These are "mushy middle" words that no longer mean anything. They don't mean anything because everyone is using them.

A liar will never come out and say he's a liar. He'll justify he's honest and then lie to you when you're not looking. Don't tell me what you do, show me what you do. What you'll do will speak so loudly, I won't be able to hear what you're saying.

Business owners and most marketing people like to use unimportant words. They waste their breath. They waste their money. They waste their time.

Instead of saying your company is polite, tell me you measure the amount of "thank you's" you get a day.

Instead of saying you're honest, tell me about the deal that went bad and how you fixed it.

Instead of saying you're experienced, create a how to video showing me how you could solve my problem.

Instead of saying you're respectful and caring, be respectful and caring.

Then use words that do matter. Words that matter have nothing to do with your business. If they did, your competitors have already beaten them to a useless combination of letters that no longer carry meaning.

In this example, it's not just a promise. It's a pinky swear promise.  And we all know that pinky swear promises are more important to keep than regular promises. It's foolish. But it works because no one else is promising with pinky swears. Now Morris-Jenkins owns Pinky Swears. None of their competitors can use that in their advertising. And if they did, they wouldn't come off as authentic.

Marketing is NOT hard. Choosing to be remarkable IS.

The tale of two brains

Spending countless hours with new entrepreneurs, I discovered a pattern in people.

There are two hemispheres in the brain: Right and Left.

The Left brain is responsible for analytics and logic.

The Right brain is responsible for creative thinking.

We all tap into both sides of the brain but our go-to hemisphere is where we generally live our lives.

Here's the problem. 

If you're a left brain thinker, you use logic and analysis to solve problems. You have an amazing ability to set goals, attain them, and schedule your day to day life to a level of efficiency that demands respect from all who observe you go. Your business or your career grows because you take charge of it.

If you're primarily a right brain thinker, you like to go to the creative side to solve problems. Creativity can't be quantified or measured. Time can look like its wasted for the benefit of obsessing over the IDEA. The person can be seen as a goofball as they seemingly waste time to find the idea. The process is discouraged by left brain thinkers.

Both types are equally effective but limiting.

An entrepreneur needs to equally tap both sides of the brain.

This rarely happens.

Instead the person remains handicapped. He may find initial success but his ultimate success is based on the ONE key thing: As business grows, who is the first hire?

Most entrepreneurs will hire an accountant, secretary or salesperson. The decision is based on hiring someone to do the tasks the entrepreneur has no time to do or doesn't want to do.

He identifies this as his weakness. And he's wrong. His weakness is tapping into the other side of his brain. 

The first hire for an analytical entrepreneur needs to be a creative type. The first hire for a creative entrepreneur is the analytical type.

Most entrepreneurs have heard that they need to hire people who can produce in areas where they are  weakest. The analytical entrepreneur can figure out accounting, process, and systems. If an idea is presented, he can figure out through systems how to implement them.  He needs a legitimate creative person on his team.

Creative entrepreneurs are scared of accounting. They don't understand the setting of goals. They are worried about process and system. It hurts every aspect of their body to follow these rigid guidelines. Coming up with ideas is easy and fun for these people. The challenge is implementing them. They need a strong analytical person to keep them on task. Someone like an office manager.

Steve Jobs was a creative entrepreneur. He would not have had success with the analytical Woz. 

Walt Disney was also creative. His brother Roy was the analytical business manager.

Ray Kroc was the creative sales guy. Harry Sonneborn was the brilliance behind financial decisions McDonalds made to make them one of the largest owners of property in the world.

An entrepreneur cannot do it alone. There is always someone, equal but opposite in thinking, who propels the company forward.

If you have employees, the same holds true. Finding a mixture of both brains is where success within the department will be found.

The analytical entrepreneur will discount creative ideas thinking they cannot be done. He will analyze and critique the idea into oppression.

The creative entrepreneur knows the analytical ideas are important but they will avoid them at almost all costs. Usually at the detriment of their bank account, the government's collection system and suppliers looking for payments.

Shelly (not her real name) is a creative entrepreneur who does amazing work. Her clients love her work. But the biggest frustration her clients have is her inability to keep her own deadlines.

She sets deadlines to have her work done and then fluffs them off until some later date. Deadlines are movable targets. Deadlines are based on not real. Ideas don't listen to deadlines. They come when they come. Her creative clients understand. Her analytical clients get pissed off. One of her analytical clients was her friend. Her creativity was so good, he continuously forgave her for overpromising until one day he realized her inability to work within deadlines was hurting his business. The relationship got rocky. The client friend had to chose between working with her or keeping her as a friend. He chose the friendship and fired her. After the business relationship ended, Shelly called her friend for advice. He wasn't the only person upset with her moving deadlines. There were others. Many others, including Revenue Canada. Shelly wasn't paying attention to their tax filing deadlines and owed them a bunch of money. She was in trouble. Her bank accounts were frozen. Her clients couldn't pay her without Revenue Canada taking what they thought belonged to them.

Shelly is terrible at account management, accounting, bank reconciliations. She is awesome at creating. Shelly needs to hire an office manager who can handle the linear work required to stay in business.

On the flip side of this brain equation, Paul is an analytical person who owes no one anything. He has no debt. He's worked his whole life to make sure the bank doesn't collect interest of his hard earned money. He decided to get into business for himself factoring in how much money he would have to earn to maintain his current lifestyle. His kids are all grown up. His house is paid for and he drives a motorcycle in the summer months to keep the vehicle costs to a minimum. People like Paul because he's a no nonsense type of guy. But he suffers from an inability to grow his business. He's had some success. But it's limited. He doesn't understand why people wouldn't choose his product over his competition when he offers the exact same product only cheaper.

A friend approached Paul and told him that he needed to break a few rules. But rules is all Paul knows. He's the f-ing poster child for living within the rules. He doesn't understand that rules create conformity, sameness, and boringness. He doesn't understand that his marketing effort needs to be focused on living on the other side of that fence. But he's not that type of guy, so doing that is not only outside of his comfort zone. It's outside of his authenticity. The only way Paul can pull his entrepreneurial dream off is if he hires a creative person to see past his own limiting beliefs.

Paul is terrible at creativity, thinking outside of the box. He's awesome at managing his bank account, setting goals and making sales calls.

Both people living in different brains have the equal but opposite effect. Their business is stale because they don't play enough on the other side of their heads.

80% of businesses fail in the first five years of opening. Is there any question why?

From a different perspective...

I have one of the toughest jobs in the organization. Some think it's fluffy. They think I have to be a airy-fairy, free-feeling, pot-smoking hippy to get results. I'm the opposite of that. I'm all about results. And the reality is everything is cyclical. There are good times when I can do no wrong and there are lean times when I'm bored out of my mind because my competition has figured out a new strategy to pull customers toward them.

When I first took this job, I used to run around and try to convince others that my product was the best. I would try to pull them away from my competitors. Then I realized that I can't force people to do something they don't want to do anyways. They want to try the competition because their offering seems more appealing. The more they try it, the more they think they like it. Even though they don't. But I'm too busy to waste my time on people who don't want to hear from me. I only work with those who like what I offer. So I stick with them until someone calls me.

I have one rule.
I don't call on customers. They call on me.

I can't convince them to want my services. They have to convince themselves.

I wasn't on the job very long when I realized the cyclical nature of this business. I work my hardest after turmoil and strife. Negative emotions worked long enough on a person become tiring. It's all consuming.  As anger consumes people, it gets so heavy that people give up.

It's when they give up the anger, hate and fear, that I do my best work.

I haven't been working very hard these days. There's an air of fear throughout the world. People are angry. Politicians are fuelling it a bit. People have hate in their hearts. It's sad. But I'm waiting. I'm running a couple of miles a day in my spare time. I need to stay in shape. I've seen this movie before. It's gonna get a lot slower for me. But then, look out. I'll have to work overtime 7 days a week.

As time moves on, there's no way I can do the job by myself. Right now, it's no problem. The boss knows that dark days are ahead so he isn't pushing me hard. He's asked me to come up with a plan to satisfy the objectives when needed.

Some think I have to hire help. Hiring doesn't help. I can't teach someone to care who doesn't already understand it. They have to have it within them.

I need help but the right talent isn't available.

Wanna know what I do?

I grow them! I plant them, nurture them, and water them. I talk to them everyday in my garden. Some call them clones. Some call them cupids.

Call them what you want, they are the future missionaries of my life's work. I will die one day but there will be another who will take my place at the heart of my business.

Business isn't that good right now. But it soon will be. People have no choice but to love. It's in them. I know because I put a seed in every single one of them when they were born. They are confused right now but they soon won't be.

-From the perspective of Love

All the good ideas are taken

If Apple thought all the good ideas were taken, they would never have invented the iPad.
If Elon Musk thought all the good ideas were taken, he wouldn't be revolutionalizing the car industry.

Most of us don't work for Apple or Elon Musk. But we all need good ideas in our lives.

Do you want to come up with some good ideas for your job or your business?

Yesterday we did a 10 minute brainstorming session for a yoga studio. The question was what could the company do to become more remarkable. There was one rule. No one could say that an idea was bad.

Here were some of the answers:
Do a cleanse as a value add.
Have a juicer and sell juices.
Have a Facebook page...

And the list went on, boring as hell.

Then one guy said: Offer yoga to lumbersexuals!

It made no sense but we weren't allowed to comment on the idea. A bunch of people giggled imagining grown men with full beards in yoga pants.

Then a couple more boring ideas hit the table, until someone said offer yoga dating.

Then another person said offer yoga glow in the dark sessions.

Then another person said beat the Guiness Book of World Records for the most people at once doing Yoga on the beach.

Every time someone laughed at an idea, we knew we were on to something. It might truly be a bad idea. At least it got our attention, we laughed and we wanted to know more. Wanting more, lowering inhibitions gave permission to others to be ridiculous.

It is in the ridiculous that the great ideas will emerge.

If the yoga girls are serious about opening this business, they have some work to do. But the worst thing they can do is be like every other yoga studio in the world. It's too hard to stand out. It's too hard to get noticed. It's too costly in time and money to wait for customers to figure out how good you are (if you are good).

These ideas are just ideas. The real work is in the execution.

The exercise demonstrated what can happen when people aren't limited by their inhibitions, their ridiculousness and negativity.

Be ridiculous. The answers are waiting for you there.

Source energy

I had coffee yesterday with a man who I've always respected from a far.  He told me he wanted to talk. He detailed his plan in moving forward in his business.  I sat there with great humility listening to this wonderful man asking me for advice.

As I watched and listened, a feeling came over me that it was not me providing advice to him.  He was providing guidance to me.  This great man is is a king among kings.  He's not rich nor is he royalty.

It's his energy. He has a magnetic personality. His smile is pure love. Despite his business accomplishments I respect this man for who he is not what he has done.

I read a great quote this week that said in order to be great one must first be good.

Despite his greatness, he showed me that we are all fragile children looking and desiring to achieve our purpose.

This great man stood before me in humility and described his fears and dreams.

At an early age I was taught that emotion (mostly crying) demonstrated weakness and fragility.  We learn to suppress those emotions over time.The hardening of time gives us the illusion that we become stronger. When in fact we are still scared fragile children.

Science has proven that color does not exist. Color is nothing more  then a series of wavelengths. The length of the wave determines the color human eyes perceives. Sound does not exist. Sound is nothing more than vibration.  When the vibration changes so does the sound a human ear perceives. Smell is an illusion. Smell is perceived by humans based on the reaction of different chemicals combining together.

Physics has proven that life is nothing but energy.  No one has to be a quantum physicist to know that. When I apply energy to my woodstove I get heat. A live human has heat. When we die the heat gets removed. In the absence of heat, energy is no longer contained.

And all energy has a source. When I turn on the lights in my home, a nuclear reactor generates energy 400 miles away to make that happen. I don't understand nuclear energy. I've never seen the plant. But I know it exists when I turn on my lights.

People are bowls of energy. We didn't happen by accident. We were created.  We are connected with translucent wires to each other. All of us independent but depend on each other. All of us connected to a power plant source.

The man I met yesterday was looking for advice for me yet he was the one who taught me an extremely valuable lesson.

We are not people. We are all just bowls of energy filled with fear, hope and desire...

Limiting beliefs

I'm too old. It's too risky at my age.
I'm too young. No one will take me serious.
My business is slow in the summer because everyone is on vacation.
My business is declining because the economy isn't very good.
I'm too fat to be attractive to someone.
I'm too skinny to be attractive to someone.
I don't have enough money to start a business.
I have too much money to risk on a business.

I could go on. I hear them everyday. Excuses that limit our ability to be successful. The excuses get engrained into our belief system and as long as we believe these statements to be true, they are.

It's called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What if we talked differently to ourselves?
What if we positioned these statements in a positive frame of mind?

Instead of saying what we can't do, what would happen if we asked ourselves the question, "How can we do it?".

It would mean that we have to take responsibility for our actions. It would mean that we are in control of our results.

And that may be scary for some of us.

Because the only reason we don't succeed is because we don't give ourselves permission.