Make lots of
money, but be clear about what that money's for. Too many
business owners I coach work painfully long weeks, whiling away
their marriages and their children's lives trying to make a
better life for, yes, those very same people they never see.
Tithe. At
church, at school, at your favorite organization. Somewhere that
spiritually or intellectually fed you. It will
help keep you honest. If you can't give your money, give your
time and if you can't give your time, give your money. I think
it was Rosa Parks who said "Volunteering is the rent you pay for
space on this earth." Pay up.
Take a
vacation. Never mind. I even tried to give away vacations and
many of you still wrote to say you just couldn't get away.
Stop making
excuses for why you didn't get there on time or didn't do it on
time or didn't take the time away. In the end, all we have is
our word and the plans we create to make sure that we keep our
promises.
Never confuse
fear with respect. This applies to your boss, your best customer
or that person who can grant life or a quick death to that
proposal you blotted the sweat and tears off of before turning
it in.
Live an
extraordinary life. Remember that thing al your business efforts
are designed to help you get. Go get it or create it. But live
it.
Eliminate
anything at work you don't feel good about. Stop having things
in your work (or home) life you want to hide from. If you're
afraid that it will come out: it will. And probably at the very
worst time.
Take power in
saying "I don't know." Then go find out what you need to know.
The tap dancing, trying to look good is exhausting and doesn't
fool anyone, least of all you.
Regret
nothing.
Get over the
glamour of busy-ness. Everyone's got a lot of their plate. Some
are just better at enjoying it all.
And while
you're at it, reduce your stress. That one thing can add years
to your life. Years you'll want back one day.
The customer
is always right, except when they're wrong. While traveling
on business, I
watched a guest hurl the most foul invectives at a hotel desk
clerk. It was painful to watch. She responded with courtesy to
every insult, looking for a way to fix a problem the customer
made while he called her names that started with N and B and
ended with nothing valuable. Her manager sat nearby and said
nothing. I gathered my things, mouthed my best wishes to the
clerk...and checked in somewhere else.
If it doesn't
work, find another way. Now. It doesn't matter if it's supposed
to work or it used to work or when the sun and the moon were
last in alignment it worked. You can sort that out later. Right
now, you need it to work.
Learn to
listen to your intuition. Lots of my work is helping business
owners and executives trust their own "emotional intelligence"
-- that voice that you didn't listen to, for example, when you
knew you should have added that section to the proposal you
didn't win....but didn't. We're brighter than we know.
You can't put
lipstick on a pig. Yeah, I'm from Indiana. Just get it. No
matter how you dress it up, ugly is ugly. Make friends with the
plain, unvarnished truth.
Don't be too
quick with a solution. At rail crossings in France, signs used
to read: "Un train peut en cacher un autre" ("one train
can hide another"). Keep looking deeper.
Listen. Your
customer, vendors, suppliers, employees and others have great
inputs and are quite generous with them. We're surrounded by
solutions.
Be a
detective about defective processes. Make it a practice to home
in on one, say, each month and attack it until you've come up
with a better way.
Be a better
boss -- not the kind of boss you'd like to have...the kind of
boss your employees would like to have. Be concerned about their
lives and be clear about the impact of your actions on them. You
may not be able to change anything you need to do, but you can
transform your workplace by deciding how you'll be about the
tough people-decisions.
Accept
responsibility. You did it. Own it.
Take your
complaints directly to the person who can do something about
them.
Start with the person you have the complaint about. It takes
guts, but in the long run, it will get the problem solved more
quickly and with less spillover.
Have fun.
There's nothing as exhilarating as being with someone who's
having a smashing-good time.
Oh, yeah and
make lots of money.
