Always Ready.. Never Surprised…

Like many things in my life, this story originates with a conversation with my wife. She was telling me about a blog posting she just read by Sharon Astyk. If you don’t know her work, check it out at this link. She is a clear writer, that’s for sure. What I appreciate about Sharon’s writing is how authentically she tells the story of her life and the impact of all of our choices on our lives.

The posting my wife was talking about is titled, Always with the Prep. I’ll let you read it to get the full story she’s telling. In essence, the message is that we can prepare for radical shifts in our world. We can do this by going to the essence of what’s involved in sustaining our life. We need water, food, shelter and clothes. That’s what we need. Everything else is not required, however, everything else is where most of our creative attention goes.

Most of us, and I put myself in this category, spend little, if any, time or attention on making sure we have the basics of life if something disrupts the way things generally work. We go to the grocery store and expect that all our food needs will be met. What happens if the power is off in your community for a month? Not so far-flung, when you consider that a million folks are still without power today from an unpredicted storm that went through the northeastern U.S. last week.

Power is needed for refrigeration, lighting and from the perspective of the grocery store owner, to collect your money. When the power is out the grocery stores are closed. What do you do about food for a month? It doesn’t stop there. We also need electricity to power the gas pumps at the local filling station, so no groceries and no gas for a month.

If you are living in an area where heat can be in the triple digits (more and more of the U.S. qualifies), how do you cool your home when it was built for air conditioning as the only way to stay cool in the summer? You can open your small windows but that will only make a dent in what you need.

I haven’t gotten to the good part yet. Then there is water. Water needs electricity too. The pumps to put the water in those towers we see around the town need electricity and the backup generators will only last a short period without more gasoline. Right.. no electricity, no gasoline.. no water….

You get the picture. We are being offered a less than gentle nudge toward preparedness. Sharon makes a good point in her piece. If there was a hurricane coming, you would stock up. Hurricane tracks are becoming more predictable. Things like thunderstorms and earthquakes and tsunamis are not. They happen when they happen.

We could say there’s nothing we can do about these types of “natural disasters” . Yes, I can’t control them. I can, however, be prepared for them. We don’t seem to want to put attention on preparing ourselves for an uncertain future. Let’s face it, the future is uncertain and we can ignore this fact or take action.

The Mormon church is very aware of the possibility of an uncertain future. They strongly encourage their members to have a year’s supply of food and water. Take a look at this excellent writing on questions of Mormonism for more details. What stops me or you from this level of preparation? Many reasons, but at the heart of it is that we are focused on protecting the present form of our life, and live in deep hope that nothing will mess that up.

I encourage you to take a new look at your life. If you are a business owner, you know that nothing is constant. How are you prepared to take care of the basic of life for your business if a major disruption happens. I know, first hand, the impact of not doing this. I consulted for a major company, who represented almost all of my client billings. One day in September of 2008, they called and said, “We won’t be needing you after this month.” Whoops. I knew better and allowed myself to be lulled into the ease of the situation, and totally forgot the truth of how life works.

If you are concerned with the care of a family or elderly parents, how can you prepare, in a reasonable way for the uncertainty of the future? It will require that you put some attention and resources on this. Some of the money you are making is set aside for this purpose.

We live in a society of gratification now. That’s ok, as long as everything remains the same. SInce that’s not going to happen, I MUST focus on preparation, or be willing to accept the consequences of my choices. Which, quite simply, are that I will be putting my business and all that I care about at risk.

Something to consider on this hot, summer’s day.

Bringing Love to Business?

Today I put to bed a new episode of Business Matters. I like my involvement with the program. It puts me in contact with people who are true change agents in the most positive way.

As I pushed the publish button on the web posting for the program, I was thinking about what to share with you today. Wednesday is the day when I bring you a conversation with someone I feel will offer inspiration. Immediately, I thought of one of my conversations with Tim Sanders. Tim was part of the Mark Cuban internet business, broadcast.com. That company was acquired by Yahoo, where Tim became the Chief Solutions Officer.After he finished his Yahoo stint, Tim wrote his first book, Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends. I loved the book, because it brought into a popular context the consideration that love was critical for success in business. Now Tim’s definition of love is too narrow for me, but it’s a good beginning.

Another friend, Deb Robins, wrote in 2010 for the Huffington Post, CEOs here’s one four letter word you need to start using. She said, “When CEOs the world over take the word love out of their closet and use it as their primary driver for success, businesses will experience unprecedented creativity, unprecedented profitability, as well as unprecedented human happiness.” You can read the article where she lays out why it makes good business sense to bring love into the office.

What would your business world be like if love was out in the open and guided your decisions and actions? Kind of makes you stop and wonder, doesn’t it?

You can listen to my conversation with Tim below.

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Reap what you Sow!

A year ago, I stopped producing Business Matters, a weekly, nationally syndicated radio program I created in 2008. I was a bit burned out and wanted to broaden my horizons. For the most part, I forgot about the program.

Fast forward to six week’s ago – I was listening to a news interview program on the radio and was reminded of my frustration with the national media. I find the content is narrow in scope and the essence of what’s going on is missing .  I feel that the role of media is to inform listeners so they are equipped to make the best decisions possible. I initially started Business Matters to fill this perceived void.

My frustration grew over the days after listening to this broadcast and I decided to again start producing Business Matters, at least every other week. It feels great talking again with people who are making things happen. The old energy is back!

This prelude is to disclose a surprise, which is the lesson I’m sharing today.  After I ceased production of Business Matters, I left the website up with the program’s past broadcast archives. After the first new program, I was curious to know the interest it was generating. As I looked at a few months of data on our online audience, I found that over 15,000 people a month were downloading the program’s archives.

As I sat with this news, I remembered how easy it is for me to create new ventures, projects or businesses. It’s kinda like sowing seeds. Sometimes, though, I forget to consider how the seeds have grown. I end up walking away just before harvest time. This sobering revelation is just sinking in.

I wondered if you experience this as well. How often do you start things and then walk away just before they’re ready to fully blossom. Just a thought for your Saturday evening consideration.

Until later,

Thomas

A New Way to Support Each Other…

I’m a long-time entrepreneur.  In the past, I secured money for business ideas in traditional ways, either from friends and family or professional investors. While funding wasn’t easy, it was still possible, if you had a good-enough idea and were able to instill confidence in the investors.

Today, it’s very different, especially after 2008. Small business startups (particularly for women) are having difficulty in finding funding even for the best of idea. I find this odd, particularly since small businesses are the job engine for the U.S. economy. To make matters worse, commercial banks, for the most part, have decided they are not interested in small business at all.

In doing research for my radio program, I found an emerging environment that is helping thousands of people get the support they need that doesn’t require government subsidies or loans. Building upon the social networks and the Internet, people like you and I are making donations or loans and providing equity to help worthy business ideas get off the ground.

This new environment is called crowdfunding. I talked with experts on the evolution of this phenomena and entrepreneurs, who are providing funding portals and programs that help connect donors and investors with those who need funding. You can listen to these conversations by clicking on Business Matters Radio.

I also took a look at the potential impact of the Jobs Act of 2012, which was recently signed by the President. For the first time, it opens the potential funding to small business from people who are not “accredited investors”. We may be seeing the dawning of a new financial system that can truly democratize business financing.

Until tomorrow,

Thomas

Racing Ahead!

Yesterday morning, I was feeling a familiar urge. I wanted to begin the process of writing a book proposal and the details for this were a hundred pages ahead in the book I was reading. I thought, “I can just browse ahead and get to that part NOW”.

I was stopped in my tracks. What was the urgency that was pushing me ahead? Why was I not peaceful to let the experience of this conversation with the author unfold rather than push ahead to get a “fix” for my restlessness?

This question put me into a state of reflection. Wherever I look, I find so many who are rushing here and there. They are on the Internet searching everywhere; getting lost from their original destination by the distraction of its endless possibilities. They are rushing to their jobs; alone in cars with their stress levels rising by the moment. They are impatiently rushing past their family upon arrival from work; looking for the TV Guide for tonight’s best reality program.

Walking around, looking ahead, I seem to be missing out on what is right in front of my eyes. Have I always been this way? I’m not completely sure, but I sense the answer is “for a long time.” This restlessness has been the force behind my drive to excel at creating venture after venture. What is the longing?

I pondered some more and heard that old voice again, “If you don’t move fast you are going to lose out.” What will I lose out on, I wondered? “You will lose out on being first, and you know that those who are successful are always first.”

So being first or at last at the front of the pack is pushing me forward. Its engendering the continuous impatience. I am reminded of the tortoise and hare story. I guess I never really believed that.

This impatience has created problems. I will sometimes act without consideration for the consequences. This leads to starting things that I don’t complete because of the impact in terms of money or other resources, such as time. It can also get me off in the weeds, so to speak. I get involved in things that aren’t in my “best interest”.

What can I do? Take a breath when I hear that old voice urging me “to skip to the end of the book.”  Implement the 24-hour rule – don’t act on anything important sooner than 24 hours after I think it’s a good idea. Finally, remember that having a few extraordinary experiences is far more valuable that a lot of ordinary ones.

Until later,

Thomas

Whose watching over us?

I have often wondered about the need in this country for consumers to be protected by our federal government. We have a number of regulatory agencies that want to take care of the unsuspecting consumer so that unscrupulous companies can’t take advantage of us.

We have the Food and Drug Administration, Federal Trade Commission, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission that are augmented with non-profit organizations like the Better Business Bureau, National Consumer League, the Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America. All these groups are watching out for my safety.

All this protection has me a bit nervous. For one thing, I wonder why they are protecting me. In this day of almost unlimited information, what is it that I need protecting from. Sure a few companies might sell some stuff that is substandard, but if I check the web before I buy, I will know about these folks. It’s almost like I have acquired a new parent. Someone who has decided what is in my best interest and because they know better than me they will make sure I am not taken advantage of.

One of the problems with this way of thinking is that these organizations assume they know what’s right for me. I believe that for the most part they have good intention, But I wonder how they can know what’s best for me. Particularly, when I haven’t talked directly to any of these organizations. So what are they basing their criteria for what’s best on? Is there a belief that we can homogenize our needs as humans to the extent where a set of standards will fit everyone? So when someone decides for me what’s best, it might be good for me to know how they reached their decisions. Otherwise, I become a tranquilized couch potato that has lost touch with my world.

Now I can delegate my decisions to others if I like. That seems to be a bit contrary though to having a strong country of informed and accountable citizens.

The second thing that bothers me about all this protection is that it doesn’t seem to work in some important areas. For instance, who protected all those folks who got sub-prime loans whose interest rates skyrocketed after the first year? Or who has protected consumers from high bank charges or escalating interest rates on credit cards or consumer check cashing offices that effectively charge 300% interest? Or how about the rush to get H1N1 vaccine to market only to have hundreds of thousands of doses recalled?

It seems that the best protection for me and you is to be well-informed and acting deliberately. I have a good idea about I want, why its valuable to me and what I am willing to pay in terms of money and safety to get it. I am not advocating a time of letting everyone fend for themselves. I think guidelines are great and that standards are fine as long as there is transparency in the standard setting process and we only apply standardization for high risk public safety concerns.

This week’s Business Matters program on raw milk had me wonder why it was so important for the FDA to take care of me when I can make an informed decision about this product. I appreciate their input and accept a requirement for consumer labeling, but if public safety is the FDA’s concern why don’t they focus on alcoholism and tobacco addition?

So let’s be more informed. Let’s reduce the need to be taken care of. I have a sense that we will all feel safer if we do.

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Motherhood and What Really Matters in Business

Money and the Meaning of Life is the title of a book Jacob Needleman published in 1994. Needleman’s premise is that our obsession with money and materialism has eroded our aliveness, robbed us of our authenticity, and left us spiritually impoverished. I read this book many years ago, and was reminded of its lessons as I have reflected upon my conversations with women business owners over the past few weeks.

I had been preparing for our Business Matters program on women entrepreneurs . For some time, I have had the sense that there was much to learn from women in business that could change for the better the role that business plays in our world. What I found crystallized my intuition and sparked a passion to learn all I can and tell their stories to both men and women.

One of the most poignant lessons came from understanding the purpose these women had for starting their businesses. In no case did they tell me that they started the business so that they could make a lot of money. Their reasons varied a bit; however, in essence, they are the same. They started the business because they thought they could do something that was valuable. They started the business because they wanted to no longer participate in a system that was focused on money first and people second. They started the business so they could channel their passions into something they loved doing.

There is a sense that with this focus these women-owned businesses would not be successful. If success is only measured in terms of maximizing profits, perhaps that is true. Maximizing profits is a code word for making as much money as possible. These women did derive profits from their businesses. That is vital in a world where we are not self-sufficient and use money to secure the resources we need for a healthy life.

For them, though, success was measured in a broader context. Success came from how well they took care of their customers. Success, for them, is measured in how they felt about themselves at the end of the day. Success, for them, comes from knowing they are doing the right thing for their communities.

These qualities are amplified by one thing many of these women share – they are mothers. As a mother, they took care of a sick child through the night while everyone else slept. As a mother, they juggled the needs of all the members of the family. As a mother, they made things happen no matter what resources they had.
All of these qualities and more are what we say we want in those who lead and work in organizations, yet we don’t place a high value on what women, particularly mothers, bring. These qualities of care, determination and imagination are discounted when a woman applies for a bank loan to start her business. They are told their work experience as a “stay at home” mom isn’t relevant. I have to tell you after talking with these women entrepreneurs that that’s just plain wrong. There is no better experience than for leading a business than mom as ‘CEO’ of the family.

What I found in women led businesses can be a roadmap for how we can move from the devastating impact of consumption at all costs. The women I spoke with show us how collaborative work environments produce better long term results for everyone. It’s time for us men to go back to the drawing board with our beliefs about what business is about and take the lessons these women are clearly showing us.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thomas

The Answer my Friend Is Blowin in the Wind

The hiatus for writing the book is over. No, the book isn’t complete – it’s underway, and shifting slightly. The biggest challenge I have is not focusing my attention on what others will think of what I am writing. This is sometimes a subtle occurrence and sometimes very overt. Whatever its obviousness, it limits the creation and instead of a sunny day, I might end up with L.A. smog. Not the outcome I intended.  So, I am walking through all we have recorded to discard what doesn’t ring, and letting the rest show me how it’s best organized.

I have been missing daily heartful connection, so I said, time to get back to feeding my soul and connecting with you!

As I awoke this morning, I had the Bob Dylan song “Blowin’ in the Wind” in my virtual headset. I could hear Dylan’s raspy voice and haunting harmonica. I went to Itunes to listen to Dylan singing in his own voice, and I found so many layers of this song.

I was thinking of the great need to have answers to today’s challenges and I heard Dylan sing, “the answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind”. I was reminded that the answers to all great questions don’t come from my mind.  My mind is limited by what it knows and what I believe. Since that is only a fraction of all that is, why would I want to look there for my answers?

Where, then, do the true answers to questions great and small reside? I am not sure exactly of the answer to that. What I do know is that I can find the answer, without needing to know where it comes from or the details of how the process works.

Allowing answers to questions to show up without restraint, and as they are really needed, requires two qualities. The first is patience. I know how it is for me – I want what I want when I want it. The only problem with this is I’m not always ready to receive what I want when I want it. I can’t see all the consequences of receiving my answer now. Maybe it would better suit me to have it a bit later. So…patience.

The second quality is easy and hard. It’s easy because we are born with it. Every one of us is born with what we call an intuitive nature. We know there is more to the world than what we can see, hear, feel, touch and smell. We know that we get “gut feelings”. We know that when we don’t follow them, things don’t work out well.

Yet we ignore our inherent sense of knowing. Why? This is the hard part of the answer. Because we don’t trust what we can’t explain. So we let our logical sense, our limited world of the mind, override what is true.

Not the best way to find our way, so when you are faced with a question that you really want to know the answer to, you have to allow your intuition to be felt. You have to disregard that little voice that says, “but how do you really know?”.  It’s just the voice of the mind speaking, and it knows the truth.

Let me know what your experiences are.

Until later,

Thomas

New Years Resolution

On this New Year’s Day for 2009, many of us participate in the practice of New Year’s resolutions. We look at areas of our lives that we want to improve – perhaps it’s our health, or our financial situation or primary relationship. Whatever the area(s) we feel need improvement are, we feel that the new year is a blank slate where we can write a new chapter for our lives.

Not unlike many of us, I am also drawn to this practice. As I was talking with my wife about the year ahead for us, I remember the years past where resolutions were so heartfully made, and then dropped by the wayside within weeks or days of January 1st.

So why does all this good intention go unrealized? I believe there are two primary reasons. The fist is that we don’t really understand change. Changing the way that life works out for us requires us to change our behaviors. Most of our behaviors are developed over time and become unconscious habits that are activated automatically.

To change our behaviors requires that we engage a practice that is focused on the change we desire. The first step in the practice is to recognize that the behaviors that create the situation I want to change exist. Through this recognition, I can watch the behaviors as they start and then begin the process of changing them. The second step in the process for change comes through a new choice on how to engage the situations that I encounter.

For instance, if I am trying to lose weight, I must first recognize the habits I have for putting food into my mouth. Maybe I hear a little voice that says, “Oh that will really taste nice, let’s give it a try.” when I spy a tasty pastry at the local coffee shop. Before I know it, the pastry is in my mouth and mostly consumed. By recognizing that there is this little “voice” that goes off when I see that pastry, I can move from an automatic response to deciding in this moment whether that pastry is really something I want to eat.

As I think about the changes I choose to make for 2009, I ask myself “what new practices will I begin to support these changes?”. So that it’s not only an intention, like saving enough money to pay off my credit cards, it’s also a series of practices that will help me recognize my current spending behavior, and support me in changing that behavior so that I can really accomplish my intention.

The second reason that our New Year’s resolutions go unrealized is that we can quickly become consumed with despair if we don’t see the results that we want right away. If my resolution is to find a new job and I don’t find that new job by the end of January, I haven’t really experienced what I’d like in finding that new job, and I will abandon my pursuit. I have the internal dialogue that says, “Well, it’s just too late to do anything about that now”. Then another eleven months go by without the change I want.

I was recently talking with Catherin Austin Fitts for the December 12th edition of our Business Matters radio program. She is a woman of much wisdom, and so many things in that conversation were very inspirational to me. One of the points she made is relevant to today’s topic. She pointed out that it’s never too late to start making changes in your life. Maybe we’re in financial situations where we are underwater with the value of our home compared to our mortgage amount. Perhaps, we are in a job we don’t like, but are afraid to make a change because of the “bad economy”. Maybe we are just so far overweight that we feel nothing can make a difference.

Whatever the inner dialogue about your situation, you can do something today, right now, that will be the first step to change. Don’t feel that you have to jump the Grand Canyon. Just take one step today. Then tomorrow take another step. If you forget, then the following day, take a new step. With each new step you will find the will to make real change in your life.

Blessings to each of you,

Thomas

Technorati Tags: authenticity, change management, Deliberateness, dotherightthing, Knowing, leadership, Practices, Priorities, Purpose, success, Trust, Truth, Wisdom

What is the role of a leader?

As i was preparing for next week’s broadcast of our radio program, Business Matters, I was talking with Peter Block. Peter is someone who I have admired for many years. His early book “Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self Interest” was an early writing that brought to my attention that the role of the leader was not to direct people but to support them in their ability to contribute.

Peter and I were talking about the leadership characteristics that are most important in a new President. Peter remarked that the notion of leadership was a problem. He feels that we still have a collective belief that leadership is something separate from ourselves. We project the responsibility for how things work out for us in many, if not all, aspects of our lives onto someone else. We often do this to someone who we believe is in power – often people with political or financial position. Peter contends that they only true role of a leader during this time is to facilitate.

We talked about what this would look like. Peter said that the useful leader would be part of a community, whatever its configuration (family, town, business, school,,,) and use their skills and gifts to help the community find its purpose and supporting its members in feeling accountable for the community living in that purpose.

As I see the disarray and distress in most organizations, what Peter said had a ring of truth for me. For too long, I and others have been advocating a leader as someone that was a role that determined who we are and what we do. This approach distances the community members from both accepting accountability for the community and for themselves. Through this acceptance of my own responsibility for everything, I reinvent my world.

Peter gave a simple example of a group he is working with. A local school district asked for his help. As he was talking with parents, he realized that they had completely delegated the accountability for the education of their children to the school district. He said to the parents and school district leadership, “This is too important a role to be delegated to anyone else. The parents must bear the primary responsibility for their children’s education.”

There are many examples where we have released our accountability to someone else. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to reclaim our role as creators or our world?

Until later,

Thomas

Technorati Tags: Accountability, children, culture, Purpose, simplicity, Trust, Wisdom