Bottom Line Success: Addictive Entrepreneurship
Bottom Line Success: Addictive Entrepreneurship
Most of all, let go of the notion that you have to be perfect.
Richard Dennis, a super successful futures trader once said, It’s amazing how rich you can get without being perfect.” I’ve often contemplated the dilemma of producing perfect work, work that meets the expectations of the client and the cruel alternative, less than perfect work. It can be counter-productive when you’re continually expecting perfection.
In a blog post, Internet marketing System Seminar founder, Ken McCarthy, in a muse on perfection noted “the perfectionist will resist and reject what IS – simply because it can never measure up to his imagined goal of what SHOULD BE.”
I once made a sales presentation to a potential client. In my zeal to impress them with my marketing genius, I gave (stress the word gave) them five concrete suggestions on how to expand their sales lagging business. Among them: survey 100 of your best customers and find out why they haven’t been doing business with you lately. Call 10 of your best customers and ask them what type of new merchandising they’d like to see to make them patronize you once again. Spend more money on getting current customers to buy more often instead of trying to get new customers. All of these suggestions, each with a potential to generate tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, was met with disdain. “I don’t like to be called at home so I’m sure my best customers won’t like it either.” I’d rather see my name in the newspaper ad which costs me a fortune each week, than spend a tenth of the money to encourage regular customers to shop more often.”
Many entrepreneurs obsess over little things that might require effort because it is too hard to make it or do it perfectly. So they rationalize and convince themselves that it wouldn’t work in the first place, especially when I have to pay this consultant $500 to tell me something I already know but don’t want to do. Even if it could generate tens of thousands more dollars.
Successful entrepreneurs learn to face their fear and channel it into action, even if it’s not perfect, because as General Patton said, “A good plan, violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” And Adminiral Gorshkov, father of the modern Russian Navy, “Better is the enemy of good enough.”
When we think of fear we imagine petty annoyances when we were younger. Like the fear of spiders or dark places or heights. Being in a tall building on top of the observation deck and looking straight down at the tiny cars and specks of human below. That’s scary.
Because we imagine what it would be like if we were falling down, pulled by the enormous force of gravity, toward the concrete slab we call earth. Plop. Dead.
Its easy to tell this story because it never happened, at least not to me. But we’ve all seen scenes in the movies where the villain is held out a window, by his two feet, dangling, screaming for his life to be spared, knowing full well if the other persona let’s go, he’ll be toast, or at most a pancake.
Revealing our true selves is a lot more difficult. Our egos are so fragile. We wrongly base our self worth at times on what other people think of us. Or worse, what we assume they think of us, as if we were professional mind readers.
Mind reading is one of my favorite ways to put myself in a rotten mood. I make assumptions of what other people think about me. Once I was at a party where most of the people there were not my closest friends, just acquaintances. I would stand in the corner and watch two people talking to each other. I have no idea what they were talking about but I would assume they were talking about ME, of all people!
It’s arrogant I guess to think you’re the center of the universe, the life of the party and total strangers are talking and all you can think of is yourself. It’s selfishness.
As it says in the book, The Four Agreements, “all sadness is rooted in making assumptions.” This is why we have so much fear around revealing ourselves. If you don’t feel good about yourself, why would you want to share it with others? Most of us, or some of us, live a dual life. I’m not saying its healthy, just a reality for some. We put on a mask of self confidence and smugness publicly. Inside our souls we are struggling with self worth issues. So its like revealing the hidden private side, we work so hard to keep under wraps that causes us fear.
The fear of revelation or our hidden self. Isn’t this why public speaking is the #1 fear?
Bottom Line Success Addictive Entrepreneurship - To learn more about this author, visit Allan Katz's Website.
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The bottom line is that to be successful in business and in life you’ll need to cultivate a sense of balance in your life. Choose to do work you love, delegate the rest. Find time each day to sit quietly with yourself and enjoy the tranquility of not having to think about anything but yourself, as difficult as that might be for you to face. Be decisive by trusting your own intuition while balancing the advise you seek from professionals who can hold you accountable.
Most of all, let go of the notion that you have to be perfect.
Richard Dennis, a super successful futures trader once said, It’s amazing how rich you can get without being perfect.” I’ve often contemplated the dilemma of producing perfect work, work that meets the expectations of the client and the cruel alternative, less than perfect work. It can be counter-productive when you’re continually expecting perfection.
In a blog post, Internet marketing System Seminar founder, Ken McCarthy, in a muse on perfection noted “the perfectionist will resist and reject what IS – simply because it can never measure up to his imagined goal of what SHOULD BE.”
I once made a sales presentation to a potential client. In my zeal to impress them with my marketing genius, I gave (stress the word gave) them five concrete suggestions on how to expand their sales lagging business. Among them: survey 100 of your best customers and find out why they haven’t been doing business with you lately. Call 10 of your best customers and ask them what type of new merchandising they’d like to see to make them patronize you once again. Spend more money on getting current customers to buy more often instead of trying to get new customers. All of these suggestions, each with a potential to generate tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, was met with disdain. “I don’t like to be called at home so I’m sure my best customers won’t like it either.” I’d rather see my name in the newspaper ad which costs me a fortune each week, than spend a tenth of the money to encourage regular customers to shop more often.”
Many entrepreneurs obsess over little things that might require effort because it is too hard to make it or do it perfectly. So they rationalize and convince themselves that it wouldn’t work in the first place, especially when I have to pay this consultant $500 to tell me something I already know but don’t want to do. Even if it could generate tens of thousands more dollars.
Successful entrepreneurs learn to face their fear and channel it into action, even if it’s not perfect, because as General Patton said, “A good plan, violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” And Adminiral Gorshkov, father of the modern Russian Navy, “Better is the enemy of good enough.”
When we think of fear we imagine petty annoyances when we were younger. Like the fear of spiders or dark places or heights. Being in a tall building on top of the observation deck and looking straight down at the tiny cars and specks of human below. That’s scary.
Because we imagine what it would be like if we were falling down, pulled by the enormous force of gravity, toward the concrete slab we call earth. Plop. Dead.
Its easy to tell this story because it never happened, at least not to me. But we’ve all seen scenes in the movies where the villain is held out a window, by his two feet, dangling, screaming for his life to be spared, knowing full well if the other persona let’s go, he’ll be toast, or at most a pancake.
Revealing our true selves is a lot more difficult. Our egos are so fragile. We wrongly base our self worth at times on what other people think of us. Or worse, what we assume they think of us, as if we were professional mind readers.
Mind reading is one of my favorite ways to put myself in a rotten mood. I make assumptions of what other people think about me. Once I was at a party where most of the people there were not my closest friends, just acquaintances. I would stand in the corner and watch two people talking to each other. I have no idea what they were talking about but I would assume they were talking about ME, of all people!
It’s arrogant I guess to think you’re the center of the universe, the life of the party and total strangers are talking and all you can think of is yourself. It’s selfishness.
As it says in the book, The Four Agreements, “all sadness is rooted in making assumptions.” This is why we have so much fear around revealing ourselves. If you don’t feel good about yourself, why would you want to share it with others? Most of us, or some of us, live a dual life. I’m not saying its healthy, just a reality for some. We put on a mask of self confidence and smugness publicly. Inside our souls we are struggling with self worth issues. So its like revealing the hidden private side, we work so hard to keep under wraps that causes us fear.
The fear of revelation or our hidden self. Isn’t this why public speaking is the #1 fear?
Bottom Line Success Addictive Entrepreneurship - To learn more about this author, visit Allan Katz's Website.
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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