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In Honor of MLK: How to be Opportunistic

Today we honor one of the greatest leaders this world has ever known. He was the epitome of a man who stood by his message and did not waiver. I have great deal of respect for that quality, not many people are like that anymore. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been brought up in multiple books that I have read recently and I love it when I get to learn something new about the civil rights movement or Dr. King himself. Today we examine how to be opportunistic through Dr. King’s work in Birmingham in the 60’s.

David & Goliath

My current read, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell, argues against what we typically think of “strengths” and “advantages.” He outlines how some of the world’s most successful people can barely read because of dyslexia and how the things we think of “disadvantages” can be the key to our true strengths and ultimately our successes.

In Chapter 6, Gladwell talks about how Dr. King and a pastor named Wyatt Walker led the civil rights movement from Birmingham. They poked and prodded the local government through marches and sit-ins, hoping to get some sort of reaction out of them that was national newsworthy. They recruited teenagers and children to protest because they knew how powerful police brutality directed children could potentially be if it made the news. Plus, if they were arrested, it would not hurt families as bad economically, as opposed to a parent being thrown in jail. Their plan finally worked when this image was captured and publicized across the country.

As the media caught wind of the photo, the scene unfolded just as Dr. King planned. The reports came out about peaceful protests and police brutality on children and national support for the civil rights movement soared. The police chief, who ordered the use of dogs and fire hoses, was relieved and the black community united as Birmingham began the journey desegregation.

Hard Work or Dumb Luck?

Dr. King and Wyatt Walker worked very hard to accomplish what they did in Birmingham. They protested, they marched, they boycotted, and they did it all without violence. They had so much patience – and faith – for their plan that they did this for years, looking for that single opportunity to bring their cause to the rest of the world. They did not know that the national media would take the photo and run with it, but they sure hoped it would.

Dr. King practiced something (many things actually) that all of us can learn from. He understood that the harder he worked, the luckier he would be. All he needed was a little ‘luck’ for one of his demonstrations to be picked up by the national media. The world wasn’t streaming live on social media as it does today. So he kept preaching, and protesting, and loving his enemy. He never gave up, and when someone as influential as John F. Kennedy got involved, Dr. King knew that big changes were sure to come.

But remember, it took him years to get to that point. He had to put in the seemingly endless work to get that ‘lucky’ just to have that photo spread like it did. He was poised and ready when the national media grabbed the photo and it’s accompanying story. When he saw the opportunity, he capitalized on it.

A Hole In One

Ever since I’ve heard that connection with hard work and luck, I’ve related it to golf. Yes, it takes some luck to hit a hole in one. The wind has to be good, the ball must roll just at the right angle, the slope of the green has to be perfect, and more.

But if you practice every day, you’re going to get closer and closer and you’re going to have more opportunities as well. So when it eventually happens, it was the product of that hard work, not luck.

A Furniture Anecdote

In my previous life I was a trainer of furniture slingin’ sales people. Part of my job was train them how to sell it: steering people into products that we had in stock, maximizing profit, asking for referrals, and much more. Each sales person was purely commission based, so their paychecks reflected how well they sold furniture and they could determine what price to charge, so they had total control of their pay.

I had a young man that was excellent with customers, but didn’t always maximize his profit. He was not on his A-game one day, but lucked out with some very nice customers that fell in love with one particular bedroom set. In sales, when someone ‘loves something’ they are usually willing to pay more for it. This young man realized that they loved this bedroom set and he swung for the fences; he threw out a high price and they loved it.

Great job! But then, they asked about a second nightstand for the bedroom set. As a commission based sales person, this is a great opportunity to make some more money. Instead of swinging for the fences again, he gave them the second nightstand for free because he had “good profit” in the sale. Had he worked harder and been prepared for that situation, he could have made an extra $50 for giving them something they already wanted.

ASIDE – Those of you that have never been in sales are probably shaking your heads and saying, “See, that’s why I hate sales people!” But you have to understand, this is how they are paid, and that’s how we they put food on the table at night. Plus, for every story like that, I have a story about customers trying to cheat us out of product or trying to get us to deliver something for free. It offsets, and those opportunities to up-sell do not come ever day.

Dr. King and Wyatt Walker were patient opportunists. They were able to capitalize when they saw their opening. They worked on what they believed in, and they stuck to it. Their plan worked and it worked because they put in hard work. They didn’t know when and where their ‘luck’ would strike, but they knew if they stayed focused it just might happen. Turns out they got ‘lucky’ after all.

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Have you ever been ‘lucky’ like this? What happened? Were you able to capitalize on the situation as Dr. King did? Leave me a comment or chat with me on Twitter.

Happy Birthday Dr. King!

17 Myths About Writers

Before I started this blogging journey, I had no idea what I was doing, I just started. I was somewhat of a reader, blogs and some books. But the closest thing in my life to writing was lengthy emails that I would send. I had no idea where to start, so I just did.

I knew that I wanted to write a book someday and it would be pretty difficult to do so cold turkey. If I didn’t have any writing experience, it would be hard to articulate the story I want to tell. However, if I practiced on my blog I could get a lot of benefit from it.

I would be able to practice consistently sitting down to write. I would be able to practice editing and reshaping story-lines. I would learn to build an audience. And if I practiced enough, I could get people excited about my book.

On that note, many people have approached me to talk about writing and their own take on it. Not necessarily my work, but their own longing to write. These conversations usually amuse me because all the things people tell me, I used to believe as well. I’m here to tell you they don’t matter. Here is a list of 17 myths about writers:

They all Know What They’re Going to Write Before They Write It

They all Dedicate 40 Hours Per Week to Their Writing

They all Write Only When They are Inspired

They all have Something Deep to Say

They all Have Their Lives Together

They all Have Neat Handwriting

They all Have Perfect Grammar

They all Have Time to Write

They are all Good Writers

They are all Intellectual

They are all Troubled

They are all Creatives

They all Have a Blog

They all Type Well

They are all Smart

They are all Poor

They are all Rich

I know all of these to be absolutely false. A writer is anyone that puts their thoughts onto a canvas, digital or physical. I am a writer and you can be as well, if you want to be. You don’t have to tell the world that you write. In fact, you don’t have to tell a soul. You don’t have to write for an audience, you can write just to clear your head (which I do quite frequently).

I used to write lengthy weekly emails for work to my team, it helped me articulate what was going on in the company. I wish I would have stuck with that more, it could have led to greater communication. Can you incorporate writing into your business? Most people don’t know what you think they know. How about your personal life? I’m sure someone is in need of a ‘thank-you’ or a ‘get well soon’ card, this is the perfect time to get on it.

I encourage you to pick up a pen and paper or just a word doc on your computer and write. It helps you sort things through, especially things like goals and aspirations that require us to concentrate on them. Just take 20 minutes and begin to let the ink bleed from the pen onto paper and see what happens. It may not be for you, but then again you may fall in love with it.

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Do you write? How often and what for? Leave me a comment below or chat with me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading, now it’s your turn.

Have a great day!

The Most Effective Ways to Stick to Your Goals (3/3)

It’s no secret that I set goals and I’m big advocate of you doing so as well. I wrote a series on goal-setting and starting in November and I used my blog to create public accountability for my personal goals just last week.

It hadn’t occurred to me to talk about struggle of how to stick to your goals day-in and day-out, but that’s what I’m going to dive into today. Please take into account, this is what works best for me. You may need a little more or a little less, it depends on you. My objective today is to share what I do, how I do it, and to get you think about how you can accomplish your goals.

Your Personal Journey

Goals are personal, and everyone has aspirations for different things in their lives. That being said, the path to accomplishing your personal goals is a personal journey. It has to be something you are passionate about and you have to want it. There will be sacrifice and there will be times when it’s much easier to give up. But if it’s truly worth that pain and anguish, the taste of victory when you cross it off your list will be one of the sweetest things you’ve tasted in your life.

If you do not feel alive when you talk about accomplishing your goals, they may not be that important to you. If you don’t get a little bit nervous when you tell someone about them, you probably aren’t setting the bar high enough for yourself. If these feelings don’t ring a bell, take a look at these two posts about goal setting to help get this journey started in the right direction.

What organizational skills do you need to reach goals?

With any goals I set, I think about them in terms of ‘the big picture’ first and then I work my way down to the details. We all have grandiose pictures of ourselves on top of mountains with ice forming on our faces screaming at the world below, “I DID IT!” But very rarely do we think about the baby steps it takes to get to that summit.

After a specific goal is set with a deadline, I begin to work backwards. Let’s take my goal of finishing a marathon for example. I was injured in the weeks leading up to the event and by the time I was healthy enough to start training, I only had 8 weeks to prepare. With the help of my girlfriend and my brother, I was able to put together a training schedule that tied up 12-15 hours of every week leading up to the race.

This is extreme for most goals in terms of time, but the important thing is that I had a plan. I had a plan that required me to work towards that goal just a little bit each day. When we set our goals, if we only plan on ‘getting around to them’ once a week or once a month, we don’t really want to get them done. On the other hand, if we put a little bit of effort towards them each day (like running/cross-training/stretching each day) a couple things happen.

We are constantly reminded of them and they stay in front of us like a carrot
We are less likely to give up on them because we have dedicated something ‘every day’ to them, instead of 1/2 a lazy Sunday

How do you stay motivated? Especially for long-term goals?

I have talked about public accountability before, but I can’t stress it enough for me. I don’t like to let the people around me down and I do not lie to people. So when something comes out of my mouth am going to stick by it. But maybe you don’t operate like that, maybe you don’t want the world to know. Just tell a few people that you know will keep you accountable.

Maybe it’s a parent or a best friend or someone you know won’t let you get away with cheating, that will call you out. I have lots of friends like that and I actively seek them out when I’m looking to take on something huge, it helps when they’re there to encourage me and not let me give up. If you don’t know anyone, contact me and I’ll keep you accountable. I know how powerful it is to have someone push you and I’m more than willing to help!

Motivation is also intrinsic. But, we all need reminders of why we started. I love the Expo Marker on the mirror trick, other people will use visuals as well. My friend Markus used to write something motivational on his ceiling so when he laid in bed he’d see it and know that he couldn’t just lay there any be lazy. Some people that are aiming to lose weight put their worst picture or their starting picture on the refrigerator so they see it each time they go to eat. Whatever your visual is, find one. Then take it and put it in a place where you know you cannot avoid it:

your car
your refrigerator
your bathroom mirror
your lock screen on your phone
your desktop/laptop background

And then the hardest part comes – DO NOT COMPROMISE! Remind yourself of why you started. Remind yourself how inspired you felt when you wrote that goal down. Remind yourself of how bad you felt when you wanted to turn things around. Remind yourself of how good it felt the last time you accomplished a goal.

Find that intrinsic motivation and dig deep. Anything worth accomplishing is not going to be easy, you’ll have to develop some mental strength, but you can do it! The more you push through, the more confidence you build and it’s a snowball effect. Keep setting goals and pushing on to the next big thing.

How do you maintain balance without a goal taking over your life?

This part is tough, especially for those of us that are ambitious achievers and those of us that are competitive, we don’t like to put other things ahead of our goals. I’m all of those, so I know how difficult it can be. First off, set your priorities before you take the journey towards these goals. Try to think about what you’re willing to sacrifice (food, a movie night, etc.) and what you aren’t willing to sacrifice (time with family, your health, etc.) Know that your goals don’t define you, that they’re only part of you. An accomplished goal won’t make or break you, but the journey will help shape your character.

Second, give yourself a realistic time frame. This starts in the goal setting phase, but works into how we plan out our goals. If I were to run another marathon, I’d give myself more than 8 weeks to train because of how rushed and overwhelmed I felt while training for the last one. If I had 12 or 16 weeks, I wouldn’t have had to been so pressured to forgo as much as I did in the weeks leading up the race.

Finally, try to give yourself varying experiences for your goals. If you only set financial goals, you’ll become obsessed with money. If you only set physical goals, you’ll spend all your time at the gym and neglect your friends and family. Set different goals for different phases of your life and you’ll be happier and more eager to attack the next goals instead of burning out on work or the gym.

The idea for this post came from a good friend, Becca Cook, that gave me some great feedback the last time I talked about goals and goal setting. When I asked for feedback on what my readers would enjoy, she immediately asked me more about long-term goals. Thank you for the inspiration Becca, hope this helps you to accomplish some of those outstanding goals!

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I’m serious about the accountability thing, I will help push you! What are some of your goals? How can you apply some of these principles to your life or organization?

Thanks for reading, have a great day!

WARNING: Feedback Needed for Motivational & Business Topics

As 2014 presses on, I’ve shared many of my goals and what I want to do with this year. But I want to hear more from you. What self-improvement or business topics would you like to hear about? What would you like me to write about? Is it something new that I haven’t covered? Or perhaps something that I’ve already talked about, but you’d like to see me go more in depth on the subject. Whatever it is you’d like to read about, please send me suggestions.

Here are some of my most popular topics from the past to jog your memory on the topic of topics. Feel free to browse on all the subjects on the right hand side bar —->

Social Media
Creativity
Leadership
Company Culture
Communication
Management
Education
Motivational

I have more topics that I’d like to cover personally, but I also want to hear back from you. If I’m writing things that are irrelevant to my audience, than I might as well have a personal journal instead of a blog. This is quite a short post today (you’re welcome) but I would really appreciate it if you sent me feedback.

If you can comment below, do that. If you are on Twitter or Facebook, just comment on the link or send me a message. And if all else fails, you can call or text me suggestions. I love writing, but I love it even more when I hear someone say they learned something or were inspired by what I had to say.

Thank you for your support, I look forward to hearing suggestions!

How Making Little Bets Will Make Us Big Winners

Many of us have had to go through some sort of transformation in our lives. Maybe it is a personal ‘version upgrade.’ Maybe it is new career that made us grow. Maybe it is the healing of ourselves after a breakup. In any of these situations, we never just wake up and say, “Hello world! This is the new me, get used to it!”

Instead, these transformations that we go through require us to make many little decisions. It’s the ‘body of work’ of our decisions that will make up who we are resolving to become. We don’t just start eating healthy one day and lose weight. We make one decision to have a salad for lunch, then we decide to get enough sleep the next night, then we throw out all the carbonated drinks, and the string of decisions get longer. As that string of decisions gets longer and more consistent, the deeper we go through a transformation.

Inspiration

I heard Jason Surfrapp (also known as Jason Sadler) talked about this on a recent podcast I listened to and it helped spark this post. He said that we’re all faced with decisions and the decision to do anything significant with our lives requires us to make some sort of bet. We may lose, we may fail, but if we don’t make that bet we’ll never know.

He goes on to say that we all start with small bets. When we make a small bet and win it, we’re more likely to make another one, sometimes a larger one. As we get comfortable making these little bets, we’re able to put ourselves out there more and more. We’re used to that uncertainty because we’ve already been there. Sometimes we stumble, but that just means we weren’t ready or we need to go another direction. But nothing happens when we don’t pick a direction (see what I did there?) and move in it.

Decision to Act

When we’re faced with decisions, our will is tested. Sometimes the decisions start hard when we make a choice to change. Other times, when we’re hit with a pink slip or a significant other breaks our heart, its even more painful to start on the path to change. But the more we stick to this path of growth, the easier the decisions get. The more ‘little bets’ we make, the more comfortable we are with our actions and the easier it is to stick to our commitments.

Big Bets

Don’t get me wrong, some decisions are more important than others. But those decisions don’t necessarily pop up in our faces at the beginning of the journey. Seth Godin often talks about how he’s built such a following over the years because his body of work is so vast, not because he wrote a great book. And the same goes for us, it’s the ‘body of work’ in our decisions that make up who we are.

Picture this: Let’s say a person is faced with 2 job offers and one leads to more freedom, but less money. Said person has been making decisions to put their family first for months. They started clocking out at 5 to take the kids to soccer practice. They started staying home on the weekends to be with the family. They eventually left their last job, not because of money, but because of the constant pressures to be in the office aka away from their family. And now, from the outside, it looks to everyone else like this person is facing a huge decision to either make less money and have more freedom or to have more money but work even harder. It’s an easy decision for the person that has been crafting their life around their family for the past few months.

For me, a perfect example is the book I’m writing. I decided a year ago that I had it in me to write a book. That’s it, end of story, right? WRONG. People won’t see the decisions to spend early mornings writing. The decisions to spend days crafting the story and editing it to be exactly what I want. People won’t see the decisions to put in tedious research or about the decisions to interview key people for the story. All they’ll see is the finished product and talk about my decision to write the book.

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What little bets are you making? Leave a comment below or chat with me on social media about little decisions crafting our lives, I’d love to hear from you.

If you enjoy what you’ve read, sign up for my email updates. You only get emails when I make a new post, it would be an honor to have you join the community!

Have a great week!

9 Startup Lessons I Learned

My recent 5 months have been filled with the struggles of an entrepreneur as I worked with my partner, Travis (Trav for short), on Epic Day Outdoors. We’ve gone through many iterations of the ‘business’ and just around the end of the year we parted ways (I use quotations here because we never technically made any money). We separated amicably and it’s for the best. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to put in the time he was going to in the coming months, and throughout the entire process we’ve put our friendship above the business.

All that being said, it was not in vain. We both learned a number of lessons from this enterprise and the experience we gained was worth well more than the time and money we invested. Here is a compilation of startup lessons learned over the past 5 months from Trav and me.

1.) Pivoting

When we first started I wanted to strangle him for changing his mind every other day, or so it seemed. We’d make headway, then we’d change direction. We’d have a breakthrough, then we’d see a roadblock and pivot. We’d talk about strategy, then we’d go the opposite path. I was frustrated, but in hindsight this is what we needed to do. If you’re starting a business (or you have a business), don’t be afraid to cut your losses and move to the next project if what you’re doing doesn’t make sense. If we had stuck with all the things we pivoted from, we’d have wasted more time and money than we did. I had to learn to go more with the flow and be open to change.

2.) Remote Work is Difficult

We realized quickly that communication was key for us and since we live in different states, we had some obstacles to overcome. If we were going to make anything worthwhile happen, we would need to be in constant communication with each other. We G-chatted, we used Google Hangouts, we’d text, and we’d talk on the phone every day to make sure we were on the same page. And that still wasn’t enough.

Remote work is great, but for what we were doing we needed hyper-communication. I think remote work can (and should) be used as often as possible, but there are just some situations that need face-to-face communication. Had we been more stable and known our end goal(s), we would have been more successful with our remote work.

3.) Outsourcing

I had always heard and read about outsourcing and the powers of internet, but I’d never experimented with them until we needed help at Epic Day. I played with websites like Fiverr.com for logos, social media help, and even key word research with some great results (most of the time). I learned that I can get help on things quickly and inexpensively if I just go look for it.

4.) Goal Setting

Yes, I write about goal setting and I preach it all the time, but we slipped away from this towards the end of our run and it was obvious how much it affected it. I learned the importance of keeping those goals right in front of us. We lost track of them after a while because we thought we were OK without them, WRONG. Be sure to keep your goals right in front of you all the time so you know what you’re working for each day!

5.) Transparency

Trav and I came into this as open as possible. We laid all our cards out on the table and there was never any questioning of what the other person was doing or what they had in mind. We did our best to be open and honest with each other and as a result we had very few, if any, squabbles (heated debates, maybe).

When we operate with full transparency, we are able to move faster. There is no question of what the others know about, it’s all on the table to begin with and we don’t have any secrets.

6.) Podcasting

I learned how to record and produce a podcast, and it wasn’t that difficult for us to get 13 episodes strung together. This was for the two of us to get together and recap our thoughts and major happenings each week. It was an experiment that became part of our weekly communication and helped us get on the same page more often than not. If you are into that sort of thing, check it out here on iTunes.

7.) There Are No Handouts

As I came into this, I didn’t know how to do a lot of things: start an email campaign, produce a podcast, pay for promotions on StumbleUpon, etc. etc. etc. And more importantly, nobody was going to teach me.

Fortunately, we live in an age where anything you want to find is on the internet. Every other video on YouTube is a “how-to” guide of some sort and every blogger in the world has a site they want you to come learn from. If you want to find out how to do something, there is no excuse, it’s on the internet. I know that no matter what I do next, I’ll always be able to find a way to do it (or improve it) and this venture helped me discover that truth.

8.) Start Small & Build It

As cliche as it sounds, Rome wasn’t built in a day. And neither was Epic Day. Trav and I are confident that his next version of the product, EpicDay.tv, will be the best one yet. And it’s taken us this long to noodle through, as he would say, to this rendition of the product. But this is his baby now, and it’s his to focus on and build from here. We’ve started from scratch and he’s got to constantly add to the product to make it something special. Seth Godin says “showing up is underrated” and Trav has to follow that now, he’s got to show up each week to make his product better.

9.) You’ll Never Know if You Don’t Try

We learned to put ourselves out there. I talked about facing challenges a few days ago and this is exactly what I meant. If we never would have tried, we never would have learned all this. If we would have let our fear of failure get the best of us, we never would have put ours butts on the line like this. Fear is going to happen, it’s about how we face it that defines us. We didn’t back down and we’ve been rewarded with very valuable, applicable lessons that we can take into any new situation.

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How can you apply these lessons to your situation? Leave a comment below or chat with me on social media about what you took from this, I’d love to hear from you.

If you enjoy what you’ve read, sign up for my email updates. You only get emails when I make a new post, it would be an honor to have you join the community!

Have a great weekend!

Why College Athletes Should NOT be Required to Read

SCANDAL

So has anyone heard about the UNC Student-Athletes that read at a 3rd grade level? This story was on the TV yesterday as I was working out and I just had to watch. I wanted to scream at the TV’s as I ran on the treadmill!

Let me clarify here, I am not upset about the fact that collegiate athletes out there can’t read, I know that. In fact we’ve all know this since the 80’s, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. I played college football and I know the inner-workings of college athletics, as well as the price that some programs will pay to win.

Fortunately, I didn’t go to a school where money grows on trees and professors were not willing to ‘bend the rules’ for student-athletes. A small, private Christian university doesn’t typically have the desire to lower it’s standards by compromising it’s academic policies.

I am upset with the fact that we (as a country) glorify, through every media outlet available, professional athletes like they are Gods among men. We praise their every move, they can do no harm, and they are the our childhood heroes.

We preach to kids that play sports from a young age that, “If you’re not smart, just be good at sports. Sports will take you places in life, don’t worry about academics.” In some ways this is true, sports can take you places you’ve never dreamed. But the sickening part is that we back this idea up and never challenge these kids to do better.

REALITY CHECK

I hate to break it to the academic counselors at UNC, but the problem is much larger than college sports. How do you think that 7-8% of student athletes made it to college reading at a 3rd grade level? Is there that much of a difference from high school senior courses to college freshmen courses? They’re still well above a 3rd grade reading level.

We cripple them from an early age. We tell them they don’t need to know how to read. As long as they can dunk, people will pass them. We don’t want to hurt the school’s chances of winning a championship now do we?

CHEAPENED DEGREES

I know there a number of people saw this and were upset by the fact that professors were promoting people that haven’t earned their grades. As they should be, why should some get a free ride and others don’t? And granted, the ratio of student-athletes compared to the total number of undergraduates in the country is small. But the fact remains that this further cheapens the degrees of everyone that has to earn their grades. Now, more people than ever have a degree and some didn’t even earn it.

The sad part is that the administrators and professors that do this are only setting the athletes up for failure. The average career of a NFL players is 3.5 years and the average career for an NBA players is 4.8 years. So what are these incredibly gifted athletes going to do with their lives when they can’t hack it in The League? Or what if they get hurt? What do they have to fall back on? A degree that’s not worth the paper it was written on because the athlete that owns it can’t even read what is says.

I guess that this ‘looking the other way’ may happen for many reasons, but here are a few of my theories:

We’re too nice – “He’s had it rough it rough in life, let me help him out and just bump is grade up one letter.” In reality, it’s not helping them, it’s hindering them. What are they going to do when they can’t read a college textbook? Oh, wait…

Everyone gets a Trophy – “Well he tried as hard as he could, he doesn’t deserve to fail.” Yet another example of giving everyone a trophy for participating. THE REAL WORLD IS NOT LIKE THIS. When we don’t do our jobs we get fired. When we try really hard and still suck at things, we don’t succeed. And when people encourage this kind of behavior, they are setting others up for failure.

Someone Else Will – “Well if I can’t pass here, I’ll just transfer. Someone else will take me.” Even more disturbing is the fact that if you don’t pass this gifted athlete at your school with sub-par grades, someone else will. So many times the athletes will transfer schools until they find someone that WILL give them the grade. We perpetuate this system, we encourage kids to do this. We all want to win games, right?

So why are we just now reprimanding them for not learning? Why are we ONLY requiring these physically talented people to perform when they enter college or the work world? It’s not their fault, this is what they’ve been brought up with. It’s what we’ve allowed to happen.

AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

What if we praised our teachers like we praise our athletes? What if we didn’t compromise our standards? How would our country look today?

I graduated college in 3.5 years, nobody put me on the national news for that accomplishment. Johnny Manziel just quit school after 2 seasons to become a top 3 draft pick and we’ll be talking about him until the draft in April. I’m a huge Johnny Football fan and an even bigger college football fan, but think about the message this sends kids. Which accomplishment do we value more?

A fraction of 1% of kids that play high school football will make it to the NFL. Less than 6% even make it to the college level, much less a top Division 1 program. This means that of the 1,000,000+ high school football players’ dreams are to make it to the NFL, than OVER 99% of them will fail to reach that goal. That’s a lot of trophies to give out to the kids that didn’t win.

PROOF

This is the same reason NFL and NBA players wind up broke. We’ve let our young athletes believe that all they have to do is be really good at sports and they’ll be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Even if they do make it to the pinnacle of their sport, it’s often short-lived and they have to figure out what to do with the remaining 50+ years of their lives.

If you don’t believe me, just go find a Florida State Fan and ask them about players not being able to read. You’ll get an answer similar to this, “Yeah, maybe… But we just won a National Championship! F-L-O-R-I-D-A-S-T-A-T-E Florida State! Florida State! Florida State! Wooooo!!!” I’m not knocking FSU or their fans (congrats Noles), it’s like that everywhere in the country. It’s not a college sports problem, it’s an American problem.

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If you would like to debate this with me, feel free to chat with me on Twitter or leave me a comment below. Thanks for reading, it felt good to rant about this 🙂

How to Gain a Competitive Edge & Avoid Falling

Learning From a Fall

‘The Stretch’

As I was at the gym yesterday I was in the middle of a stretch that would have made my brother proud. With one leg extended out in a lunging position and pulling up the opposite for a quad stretch, I was in position that required high concentration and a lot of balance. Only two points of my body were touching the floor and if my eyes were not focused on my toe/knee in front of me, I would surely fall.

But sure enough, some guy was doing some sort of overly elaborate jump rope routine and I just had to look. TIMMMBBBEERRRR! His desired effect accomplished (aka look at me), I had to snap out of my stretch and throw my hand down to avoid landing on my face. I lost focus on myself and paid the price with a tumble off the mini-yoga mat on which I was positioned.

Focusing on Competition

Too often we do the same thing in our businesses. We are so focused on what our competition is doing, that we skimp on putting work into our own product. We obsess at how great their website looks, we talk about their marketing campaign, we speculate on how much they paid for their building, and then we wonder why they are mopping the floor with us.

Don’t get it twisted, there is a time and place for observing our competition. If we are oblivious to what they are doing, we can be outflanked or undercut in a heartbeat. But when we let it take up more than a small fraction of our time, we lose focus on what is important: ourselves.

It is important for us to know our competition, but not be captivated by them. We need to know when they are running specials and what their core competencies are, but we don’t need to check up on them every morning, noon, and night. Find out what they’re good at, if we can beat them there, beat them there. If we can’t beat them there, find out where we can beat them and focus on that.

Avoiding the Fall

What if we spent that same time on our own business?
What if, instead of envying their website, we look for a web developer to help us improve ours?
What if, instead of talking about their marketing campaign, we implement a new social media campaign of our own?
What if, instead of speculating how much they paid for a building, we focused on maximizing our floor space to show more products?
How different would things be for us if we stopped worrying about the competition and focused on our business?

A Good Example & A Bad One

In my previous life I worked with a store that was more than preoccupied with their competition. They would do all of the above and then some. But they had a solid business and a good base of customers. They had disadvantages in some areas which were hard to overcome, but in other areas they were head and shoulders above the competition.

The store owner would tell me how awful it was and how much time they spent trying to ‘mess with competition’ instead of working with their own unhappy employees. They would brag to me how about how they would flag all the competitions’ ads on Craigslist when their own marketing campaign wasn’t bringing in it’s potential amount of customers. They were focused on the wrong things and they have remained a ‘middle-of-the-pack’ furniture store since not heeding my advice to stop wasting time on those sorts of activities.

On the other hand, another store has done completely the opposite. They embraced the competition, studied them, and saw where their store had advantages. They focused on those core competencies and didn’t stress over every little move the competition made. THAT ended up being a $2,000,000 store this past year.

Focusing more on your own business is a competitive edge. How are you spending your time?

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What competitive advantages does your business have over others? Leave a comment below or chat with me on social media about your core competencies, I’d love to hear from you.

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Have a great day!

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