A Linchpin and a Cup of Coffee

Aaaand Scene

As I went through the Starbucks drive through in Neptune Beach, FL the other day, I had a lot on my mind. I was distracted and not necessarily in a good way. As I was heading to see my dad, I pulled through and ordered a Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte – I’ve been trained well.

As I pull up to the window, the young guy at the window is smiling at me like he’s had 4 shots of espresso in the last hour. He’s as positive as can be and I can’t help but courteously smile back. I pay, get my coffee, and right as I begin to pull out he spots something in my passenger seat.

Half-joking Starbucks bro: “I see you’ve been cheating on us, eh?”
Sheepish me: “Uh…Um…No! I mean, yes, but it was because I was traveling and there wasn’t a Starbucks…”
Bro: “Haha it’s OK, you’re here now! Have a great day!”
Me: “Haha will do, you too. Merry Christmas!
Bro: “Merry Christma…..”

I was caught off guard, big time. He spotted a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup in my car from the day prior. I stopped on the way to Florida and Dunkin was the chief coffee supplier in that particular fueling station.

Customer Loyalty

This bro knew that the brand he represented had such a cult-like following that he could get away with a statement like that and I would get the joke! I loved it, I was blown away by his ability to think on his feet and make me laugh from a drive-thru. Would he be able to do that if he worked at a McDonald’s? Hardly.

Starbucks Bro didn’t need to know that I regularly have Starbucks and that’s my coffee spot of choice in my hometown. All he knows is that the average Starbucks drinker swings by 18 times per month. He knows his customers are loyal and he has a bond with them, even if they’re not one of his regulars. He can make jokes like that an not make people feel uncomfortable. He read the situation very well and acted quickly to make me remember this interaction so much that I wrote about it.

A Linchpin

This type of interaction is the work of a Linchpin. If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Seth Godin’s work. One of my favorite books of all time is Linchpin. I think everyone should read it, I promise it’s applicable to your life.

Seth defines a Linchpin as someone that is indispensable: the server that has an ability to calm customers and gets along with all of the kitchen staff during rush hour. The doorman that always brightens everyone’s day, no matter what. The VP that treats everyone in the organization the same from top to bottom and goes above and beyond the call of duty. These are people that bring their best selves to work. They don’t just serve coffee and smile, they create a WOW experience. Starbucks bro, thanks for creating an unforgettable experience!

Can we Create Linchpins?

The short answer is no. But we can encourage this type of behavior in our workplaces. When someone does something that is out of the normal, encourage them or thank them to let them know their work is recognized. We can do our best to hold those people in high regard that don’t just punch in and punch out.

And finally, we can invest in our people. When we invest in our people, they want to give more. Starbucks has great continual learning programs, it’s not a surprise that I had this sort of interaction. When we invest in our people, they repay us by shining to our customers. 

What can we do to bring our best selves to work? What can we do to create unforgettable experiences for our customers and co-workers? What can we do to encourage the work of Linchpins in our organizations?

I’d love to hear your experiences with Linchpins in different situations, leave a comment below or chat with me on Twitter.

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Christmas is tomorrow!

I am very thankful to have each of you reading my blog. Writing is fun for me and I hope that I am bringing each of you value! 

Merry Christmas!

What Duck Hunting Taught Me About Niching Down

Why duck hunting?

In my weekly quest to get out of my comfort zone, I am taking on new challenges to broaden my scope of the world. This week I went duck hunting with my Epic Day partner, Travis. Getting out to do stuff like this is exactly why we began Epic Day in the first place. It’s a great excuse to learn how to do fun stuff, plus when we have a website we get free and discounted trips! Friday was just Trav and me on the Intracoastal Waterway.

As part of Epic Day, Travis put together a “101 Course” for our website on duck hunting. Since the season started a few weeks back, he’s gone a handful of times, but this was the first time he’d taken a true beginner like me. He has the fever, he’s addicted. And I can see why, it’s a fun time and it’s very calming to be out there in nature… plus you get to shoot guns, so that’s always awesome. I had read a lot about it and I’ve shot lots of guns, but never dressed up in camo with the intent of bringing home some food. 

Intricacies

I showed up to Travis’ parents house at 4:00 PM to help get the ganoe (yes, that’s a G, it’s more than a canoe) filled and ready to go. Travis had done most everything already so we put on some camouflage, packed the ganoe with some palm frawns, loaded up the shotguns and our hunting licenses and shipped out.

Trav had already scouted a great spot for us. How did 2 amateurs know it was a great spot? Someone had already set up a pretty permanent duck blind in the place we came to. A duck blind is necessary because ducks and waterfowl have great eyesight and we need to be covered up or we’ll spook them when they are coming in to land. The spot we came to was a pretty opened pool where ducks can land after flight.

Sunset was at 5:30 and we had to get set up quickly so we could take advantage of the 15-20 minutes of twilight right before sunset. We had to set up decoy ducks made of plastic in pairs of drake/hen, drake/hen, drake/hen (aka male/female) to try and fool more ducks to land near them. Then we setup shop near the pre-made duck blind and posted our own palm frawns into the mud to cover ourselves in the ganoe.

Shot Fired

No wonder Travis didn’t want to go on his own, this is a lot to know if you’ve never been by your self. At sunset, exactly 5:30 PM, we could no longer shoot so from about 5:12 to 5:29 we were posted up and ready to fire… but nothing came. Then, right as we were about to retire for the evening and call the day a wash, 2 ducks came flying straight at us.

“Can I shoot those Trav?”Niching Down Quote

“Where??”

“Behind you, right there!”

“Yes!! Uh oh, my safety’s on!”

BOOM!

I fired a shot just they went in front of us. No dice, but man my adrenaline was pumping! I was beginning to think it was all too much work and we weren’t going to have anything to show for it. But even firing one shot at the moving targets has me itching to go back out again as soon as possible.

Application

As we were heading in for the day, I couldn’t help but think about how much we needed to know about this to have a successful hunt. Yes, there is some dumb luck involved, but there are so many factors to take into account. The temperature, the time of day, the direction of the wind because they like to land into it, which animals are legal to take, the formation of our decoys in a “J” shape or a straight line, the ganoe placement, and more. I began to see why time is needed to become a good hunter.

In each of our professions, whether it’s commercial real estate or the manufacturing of shoe-laces, we need to be masters of our craft. If we don’t know about every facet of our business, we’re doing ourselves and our customers a disservice. We have to be experts in our respective fields.

If we spread our attention across multiple businesses or ideas, we’ll never be able to focus in on what can bring us the most benefit. If I really wanted to become and avid duck hunter, I’d need to apply myself vigorously to become a master at it. I would have to forgo some other hobbies and invest my time and money heavily into duck hunting.

Niching down our businesses allows us to be masters in our respective fields. It allows us to focus in on a small segment of the market to become masters of that particular craft. When we aren’t spread thin, we find that we can apply ourselves to the best of our abilities.

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What is your niche? How do you continue to master that craft?

Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear what you do to become a master of your niche.

P.S. 2 Days till Christmas!

How Minimalism can Grow our Businesses

As I begin packing for an extended stay in Florida for Christmas, I am reminded of how minimalist my life has become. I am not an avid practitioner of minimalism and I have not gone off the deep end, I just don’t have as much stuff in my life as I used to. But there are some important lessons we can use while making plans in our businesses.

I have an advantage

I’m a guy. We don’t need 4 pairs of shoes for a weekend trip. I can re-wear the same pair of jeans from Friday to Monday and nobody would be able to tell. This usually makes packing very easy for me when I leave, whether it’s for a weekend or week. I learned this from years of traveling for work, I used to constantly over-pack. However, this holiday trip is different.

I have a wedding to go to, church to attend, golf to be played, running to be done (yes, I’m finally fully recovered), and ducks to be hunted. Needless to say, I have a busy stretch ahead of me, and I am in the process of packing for all this. My single roller suitcase is going to turn into a car-full of shoes, suits, golf clubs, and 1/2 of the clothes I own!

Minimalism defined

minimalismWhen we get used to not having a lot of “fluff” in our lives, we don’t need it. I do my best to live with only the essentials. I try not to buy more clothes than I would wear, I don’t have a brand new car “just because I want it,” and the items I have in my home are functional so I have a little junk as possible. But when I recently moved I realized that I had accumulated more junk than I realized, I had to simplify. I donated 10 bags of cloths & stuff to Goodwill and threw out enough trash to fill an entire garbage truck. I was a stress-relieving process that helped me strip life down to the essentials. 

Minimalism is difficult to define since it’s more of a concept than a concrete thing. Basically, it’s living with only the essentials. Part of the definition I found on Wiki was “not completely without ornamentation, but that all parts, details and joinery (referring to architecture) are considered as reduced to a stage where no one can remove anything further to improve the design.” Although this is an architecture definition, it perfectly captures the idea I am attempting to express.

Application

In art, architecture, our lives , and most importantly for this example, our businesses it helps us to strip away all that is unnecessary and only focus on what we need. I enjoy learning and practicing productivity tips because they are similar in philosophy to a minimalist: nothing is unnecessary.

I get it, you kind of have to be a radical to be a minimalist. Again, I am not one. If I were, this post would be 3 sentences long and this blog would be much less intricate. However, the 2 part application of a minimalist theory to our businesses would help many of us.

1.) Strip away all that is unnecessary –

  • Meeting that don’t have a real objective
  • Reports that don’t bring any action or have any purpose
  • Busy-work (I loathe that term)
  • Processes that slow down decision making

2.) Focus on what is most important in the business –

  • Is it product design?
  • Is it a lean manufacturing process?
  • Is it customer service?
  • Is it the people we hire?

When we take away the things that aren’t absolutely necessary to us doing business, we can focus on our core competencies and improve them. What can you improve in your business today?

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Have you recently stripped your business down to the core? Share what the process was like and what you learned.

Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on stripping down a business.

Have a great weekend!

P.S. 5 Days till Christmas!

What’s Wrong with our Education System?

I have a couple scenarios to run through today that are in backwards fashion coming from me. Usually I use a real-world example to explain a business situation, today I will do the opposite. It’s the same message and there’s a lot to learn.

I hope, for your sake, that you are not able to identify too closely with either of the outlined illustrations.

Warehouseing Flaws

Picture this scenario: We own a wood-working business and we are just getting started filling up our warehouse with raw materials. We aren’t really sure what we’re doing, our expertise is woodworking, but we can get through this. So we map our a warehouse and we stuff it full of inventory as soon as possible, we have work to do.

2 months later we come to the realization that we packed out our warehouse completely wrong. We put all of the wood at the back of the warehouse behind all of the tools, nails, and polishes we use on them. We can’t use any of those materials until we have the wood.

Instead of rearranging the warehouse to make more sense, we just leave it as is and ‘work around it’ because we don’t make excuses.

We put and leave the cart before the horse.

This eventually leads to an extreme lack of productivity and we go out of business because we can’t turn products fast enough to keep up with our competitors.

Backdrop

My sister-in-law is a Kindergarten teacher and I’ve been fortunate enough to spend a good deal of time with her over the past 2 months. Our conversations have drifted towards the education system and it’s flaws on more than one occasion.

It saddens me to hear how few resources we provide teachers, how bureaucratic the system is, and  how backwards we have come to do things. 

She’s told me horror stories of lacking funds, of having programs cut, and of blatant indifference of children’s progress by parents.

I do my best to tell her she’s amazing every chance I get. She’s a better person that me to deal with that struggle every day. When I hear how things work from the inside out, I’m not surprised to find out our country is 17th in the developed world in terms of education.

Education System Flawseducation system flaws

Picture this scenario: My sister-in-law’s school was provided with a new reading initiative from the school district.

Every grade in her school (1st – 5th) was provided with the proper reading initiative that had been set forth… except Kindergarten. So only 1st through 5th grades received the materials for the new initiative, even though nearly every child goes through Kindergarten.

Anybody see the problem here?

KIDS BEGIN READING IN KINDERGARTEN.

They skipped the basics and are sending the kids into 1st grade without any of the essentials to learn to read. Now this was a funding issue, but that shouldn’t make a difference in this backwards scenario. If kids can’t read to begin how, how are they going to improve in 1st grade? We are setting them up for failure and they haven’t even graduated from elementary school.

Contradictions

Yes, I know just yesterday I said, “people are inherently smart” and I still mean that. I also said we don’t give them the opportunity to prove it. And now I’m saying we don’t foster their abilities at an early age.

The ones that want to learn, the ones that want to better themselves after grade school and college, they have more resources today than ever in history. And those are the ones that will use everything at their disposal.

But there is still another segment that needs to be addressed, the segment that only gets a basic education. Our basic education is too basic for our modern society and we need to make improvements. Just like our wealth distribution, our education distribution is highly skewed.

Why don’t we fix them?

But at this point, how could we fix all this? We have fundamental flaws in our education system that can’t be fixed by a policy or some extra money being thrown at it. When we make decisions like the one I just described, we show how little we care about our education systems.

We may not make excuses, but we sure make mistakes, and these are some of them.

In our businesses, we can stop being pig-headed and fix our mistakes. We can take the time to do things right and measure twice so we can cut once. We can also see the fundamental flaws in our decision making and fix the issues where they start, not just give a surface fix.

As for the education system, we are talking about the government here. I have no idea how we would go about making changes like these to improve our education system.

I know I have at least 2 educators as readers, but I would love to hear more from everyone on ways we can improve this. We can support teachers financially through the website below and we can always tell them and show them they’re appreciated any chance we get.

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What sort of improvements to the education system would you like to see? How can we make these happen? 

Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the education system.

P.S. 6 Days till Christmas!

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Why Some Organizations Will Almost Always be Faster than Yours

When we think of the archetypal business model, we think of  a pyramid with the CEO up top then tiering down to upper management, then the managers, then the front-line workers. The more difficult the decisions, the higher up it must be passed along to be decided. What we get with this model is an entire front line of people unwilling and unable to make decisions while forcing the upper tier(s) to spend all their time thinking for others instead of planning. So how do we avoid this?

Source www.rossanaroja.com/

Source: www.rossanaroja.com

Empowering People

When we examine businesses that thrive and those that collapse, we see some that are clinging to the hierarchy described above while the start-ups that seem to be taking over the world are thriving. We are seeing this because the start-ups are much more nimble, and now that they are able to attain cash up front from VC’s (venture capitalists) they can afford to bring on other great minds to work alongside them that share their passion.

When this happens, the smart people that started the company are able to focus on growth because they can hire other smart people to surround themselves with. Since they are surrounded by capable people, they don’t need to make decisions for them and the founders can focus on growth. They empower their people to make decisions and trust that they will make the right ones, allowing start-ups to make fast decisions. Meanwhile in corporate America, time is wasted passing the buck up the ladder like an a scene from Atlas Shrugged.

Hire for Quality, not to fill Space

So we know that fast organizations have few tiers and they empower their front line people to make as many decisions as possible. That’s great, but how do we get those people that are responsible enough for us to trust? Don’t skimp on the hiring process.

Spend some time and money up front to save headaches in the long run. Be picky about who you want to work with. Do they mesh with the team? Can they solve problems? Can they think on their feet? Be sure to have all these questions answered before they are brought on. It’s going to cost a little more, but it’s going to be worth it. The older I get the more I realize that the cheapest isn’t always the best. 

Training

But Mike, it’s too hard, I don’t have that kind of time or money.

First off, yes we can, I guarantee that we haven’t used all the tools at our disposal. Have we ever dropped what we were doing and put ‘HIRING’ at the top of our to-do list above all else? Use some of that fancy internet I talked about above to find some online resources and dabble in social media since you’re now a master at of.

Secondly, if we can’t find them, make them. I spoke at length about investing in our people and the benefits of doing so (ironically, that came from one of the most stringent hierarchy systems, the US armed forces) back in November. What is it we want our people to know?

  • Effective customer service tactics
  • How to upload pictures to a website
  • Improved closing ratios on sales calls
  • Standard accounting practices
  • How to use Microsoft Excel

Most skills in the workplace are learn-able things, but we must take the time to teach people up front if we want to save ourselves the hassles in the long run. Set up work-shops and teach people on the job or give them paid OT to come and learn. They will appreciate the investment we make in them and will be more eager to perform for us. Most people are inherently smart, unfortunately we don’t give them the opportunity to prove it to us.

If it were too hard the entire collegiate athletics system outside of Division 1 would crumble. Coaches deal with this and thrive in situations because they use the resources at their disposal to the best of their abilities, they cannot make excuses. The only difference is that their success if much easier to identify: W or L.

Empowering PeopleReprimanding

When we give our people this much responsibility, they’re going to make mistakes. They will handle something differently than we expect, they will drop the ball, and ultimately the company will take a step back because of it. BUT, if we are prepared for it and if we have built a culture of learning, we can learn from it properly.

It will be crucial for their development that we handle their mistakes properly. Second guessing their every move only after it is made is not the way to encourage growth. Giving them as much information as possible up front and then teaching as they go is the best way to build their confidence. Don’t just tell them what they did wrong, encourage them when they do right as well.

Using a ‘reprimand sandwich’ as I heard it referred on Dave Ramsey’s Entreleadership Podcast is the best way to keep spirits high, while pointing out mistakes. Sandwich a reprimand for a mistake in between two positives for the most effective way to teach a new person. Everyone reacts differently, but this is the safest when dealing with a new person that is still building confidence.

Take the time to learn how your people learn so that you can teach them best. And learn how they respond to criticism as well, some people thrive by being publicly reprimanded and others will quit on the spot for something like that. Everyone is different, it is our job as leaders and managers to figure that out.

Remember that the goal is to make our organizations fast by empowering out people to make decisions, this will allow us to spend our time planning for the future so we can grow our businesses.

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Does your organization put decision making in the hands of your front line people? What are the positives and negatives associated with this type of management?

Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this follow-up technique!

P.S. 7 Days till Christmas!

One Trick to Build Brand Loyalty and Gain More Sales

Consumers today are bombarded with constant messages from advertisers in every direction. They have messages shoved in their faces while driving from the radio and on billboards, while surfing the internet, and even while using the bathroom in many restaurants. It’s non-stop. So how are we, as small businesses, supposed to cut through the clouds of smoke and mirrors to differentiate ourselves from others and build brand loyalty?

Memorable is Still Bad

As I spoke about in November, being just memorable is bad. We want our customers to have an unforgettable experience that they must tell everyone about. When people leave our store, our website, or our offices we want them to walk away feeling like they have been taken care of.

Today’s consumer is accustomed to a few things from businesses.

  • being barraged with marketing messages every minute of every hour (Thanks David Ogilvy)
  • being treated like cattle (Thanks airline industry)
  • getting what they want, when they want it, if they whine loud enough… even when they’re wrong (Thanks Wal-Mart)

I see two solutions to these scenarios. We can attempt to break our customers of this and retrain them. OR we can take the Steve Martin approach and “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” I choose the latter for this example.

Brand Loyalty

They must leave the interaction with our company feeling like we have become a partner, a companion, or even a friend. Any one of the above acquaintances would have a hard time cancelling an order, writing a bad review online, or even complaining about minor blemishes in a product.

build brand loyaltyWhen we can achieve this level of brand loyalty, the flywheel has turned for us. People do not want to offend a friend, they do not want to burn a bridge with a partner, most people generally want to be liked (there are ALWAYS exceptions). People don’t want to let a companion down by buying from another brand. They have a sense of responsibility driving them to come to us, bypassing our competitors. 

When people become loyal to our brand, they will forgo others even if their prices are lower. Yes it’s shocking to hear, but it’s true. They will drive further because they know they will be taken care of and they will get a genuine transaction. And most importantly, they will become spokespeople for our brand. This is the biggest determining factor of how your brand should be measured: How many referrals does your brand get? If you get none, you need drastic changes. If you get many, find out why and put those reasons at the core of your business.

However, people will not become loyal to our brand until we treat them like they are special to us. OK Mike, I get it, we need to treat them right, we need to blow them away, we need to make them fall in love with us… get to the instructions!

Personalized Touch

We can’t expect people to be loyal to us until we’re loyal to them. All relationships, including consumer relationships, are two-way streets. If neither party makes a leap of faith to build that relationship, it never grows. The one that leaps first will always set themselves up to be let down. When dating, its commonly referenced as ‘keeping our walls up’ so we don’t get hurt. As businesses, we cannot operate with our walls up. We have to be the first to make that leap of faith and put ourselves out there.

Using hand-written thank you notes is the best way to build relationships and begin to put our businesses out there. A hand-written thank you note tells the recipient that we not only took the time to get a card, but to put our email aside, drop our phones, and write them a personalized message. There’s no way this could be duplicated, there’s no way it could be spammed, it is a personalized note addressed to one person (or business in a B2B world) expressing gratitude.

Thank you notes can be sent after a customer purchased, checking up on their satisfaction. It can come after a sales call, a perfect follow-up for those multi-encounter deals. They can come after a job interview, just thanking someone for their time. There are countless other times that a hand-written thank you note can strengthen a relationship. As I talked about last week, we all yearn for connections, this is a perfect way to do it. 

Side Effects

The most important part about sending hand-written thank you notes is the accountability it creates. When we know that we’ll follow up with a customer after a sales call, we pay extra attention to what they’re saying. If not, how would we personalize the message? Taking the time to write thank you notes forces us to pay attention to our customers and treat them as humans instead of cattle. It shows them that we care about them and we’ll do what it takes to make their situation correct if something has gone wrong. And finally, it makes us stick out from the crowd.

When we are so good that we can’t be ignored, we set ourselves up for success by giving our customers something to talk about. When we make that interaction so personal with a hand-written thank you note we are building brand loyalty and simultaneously encouraging those people to be speak on our behalf. And if we’re doing a great job creating an unforgettable experience, we know they’ll have nothing but awesome to talk about!

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Do you write thank you notes by hand? If not, where can you implement this practice to grow your business? Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this follow-up technique!

P.S. 8 Days till Christmas!

6 Lessons I Learned from Running a Marathon

A few days ago I started a series called ‘Leaving my Comfort Zone‘ that I’ll be adding to about once per week. I have always heard amazing people and entrepreneurs talk about growth, and they never seem to mention being comfortable. They always use words like, “terrified” or “nervous” or “unsure” when describing pivotal moments. I want to share these experiences with you so we can all learn from them.

The Back-story

In Spring I decided I wanted to knock something off my bucket list this year. I had been running much more frequently and began to see that I loved it. I was already good at it, or so I thought, I was running 15 +/- miles/week at that point. And it had been a while since I challenged myself physically. Shortly after, I signed up for the Kiawah Island Marathon and began to train. Here are the 6 Lessons I Learned from Running a Marathon.

(1) Pivotal Moments Can Make Us (or break us)

Once I signed up, I began to run one long run per week to prepare… Until I pushed it too hard. My IT band didn’t want me to run this marathon. Now I couldn’t even run 3 miles without wincing in pain. How was I going to make it 26.2???

Should I quit or should I push on? If I quit, nobody would blame me, it’s a difficult feat that only 0.5% of Americans have completed. But I wasn’t going to let myself off the hook that easy. I have had this on my bucket list and I want to do this before I die. I was pushing on, it was decided.

Fortunately for me, my brother is an athletic trainer and I had a specific therapy regimen to follow within days of my injury. Had I not resolved to do it, I never would have called him. Jim Rohn said, “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

(2) My Hobby Became a Job

When I first started, I loved to run. It was stress-relieving, it was fun, it was a great workout, and I used the time to listen to audio books. But after the injury I started a strict training schedule that required me to run 4 days per week. Due to my injury I needed a good 20 minute warm-up and I needed at least 45 minutes to cool down properly, and that was just on running days. I needed to do additional exercises 3 times per week, I needed to ice myself down in certain places up to 4 times per day, and I was to take ibuprofen like it was candy.

I was spending upwards of 15 hours each week on this ‘hobby.’ I was sick of training after only a couple weeks in! I found out how committed I was when the reality of how much time and effort required became apparent. I had to sacrifice comfort, sleep, time, tasty foods, and social commitments to ensure that I could finish this race. This was not meant to take over my life, but that’s what I knew I needed to do to finish the race. Had I not been committed to this, I would have flaked out and been content with not giving it my best effort.

(3) Haters come from Everywhere

Whenever we put ourselves out there and announce our goals, we set ourselves up for criticism. People will question our motives, they will question our abilities, they will even question our sanity. But when we know we want something, nobody’s words are going to stop us. Here are some things I heard while training:lessons from running a marathon

  • “Why?”
  • “It’s how long? Is that physically possible?”
  • “Are you running for a cause or something?”
  • “Are you sure? Why?”
  • “That sounds terrible”
  • “I don’t get it”
  • “Why are you doing this again?”

Very rarely did I hear, “That’s awesome! Good luck!” or anything similar to that. It’s not that people truly want us to fail, but when we put ourselves out there it makes others realize what they’re not doing in their lives for personal growth. They don’t mean to drag us down, but that’s what they’re attempting.

When we go against the grain, it scares people. Don’t let their fear of being different stop you from doing something your heart and mind are set on. Let them stay in line, let them be content, let them say what they want, but don’t let them stop you from accomplishing your goals.

(4) Nerves are Good

My brother arrived the day before the race and from the minute he saw me, he knew something was wrong. I had been getting slightly sick, I hadn’t slept well, and my legs were tired. I was so nervous I could barely sleep the night before the race. What if I didn’t finish? What if my knee didn’t hold up? Had I trained hard enough? What if I get really sick tomorrow?

I questioned myself because I was nervous, that was a good thing. I knew I had trained hard enough, I knew my body could handle this, I knew why I was doing this. I was leaving my comfort zone and headed into uncharted territory, I was pushing myself to a place I’d never been. 

(5) Challenges Multiply When we’re Close

Right before the gun, during the national anthem, I realized that the hard part was out of the way and all I had to do was run. This is why I started this. It was time to check this box and cross this off the bucket list!

After a while my legs seemed weak, or maybe that was in my head, I’m still not sure to this day. And then I had to pee. And then my knee brace popped off. It was only mile 6… I had 20+ miles to run and I was a wreck!

But I reminded myself why I was there, how much I’d put into this, and resolved to finish this race come hell or high water. I was back on track. Then I hit ‘The Wall’ at mile 17. Side cramps, throbbing in my knees, dry mouth. My body was trying to tell me how stupid I was. I had to slow down and walk more times in that 2 mile span that I did for the entire previous portion of the race.

After mile 20 it was all mental. I turned off my iPod and just focused. Everything hurt, but I was determined to finish, I was not going to be beat.

(6) We Can Amaze OurselvesMike McCann Pick a Direction

After I finished I could barely stand, but the pain was good. Lots of people are capable of doing great things, but few people actually do them. I felt accomplished when I finished, and nobody can take that away from me.

The best part is now I have grown my comfort zone. I know that I’m capable of doing this and I know how high I have to set the bar next time I want to push myself.

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What are you doing to get out of your comfort zone? Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on personal growth!

P.S. 9 Days till Christmas!

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Race Results

  • Time – 4 Hours 7 Minutes 40 Seconds
  • Pace – 9:23 average mile
  • Results – 15th place in my age group &  348th place overall
  • More details here

Why Counterbalancing Improves our Effectiveness

Some of us go, go, go and we never stop. Never taking a break for coworkers, family, or even ourselves. These are the ones that burnout. These are the ones that can’t really enjoy life because we’re so focused on our work. We need to be counterbalancing our focused work with family time, with study time, and with ‘me’ time as well.

A Parable

There’s a parable I love about two lumberjack brothers that decide test their skills against one another. They have an all day wood chopping competition that would make my friend Reed blush. The rules are simple, whoever has the biggest pile at the end of the day is the better lumberjack.

counterbalancing

#reedbrownchopswood

They begin in the early morning furiously chopping wood at the same rate, building equally impressive heaps. After a couple hours, the older brother takes a break and walks away. The younger sees the opportunity and begins to chop even faster, forgoing rest. The older brother returns and begins to chop away for another couple hours, then takes another break.

The younger brother again forgoes rest and continues to plow through logs as fast as he can while his brother is away. He noticed that his pile had initially been larger than his brothers in the morning, but as the day went on his brother’s pile seemed to overshadow his own. So he put his head down and chop away as hard as his body would let him. This happens again and again until the day is over. The older brother would take a break every couple of hours and the younger would push through.

At the end of the day the older brother had a pile more than twice the size of his brother’s! The younger brother was furious. “How did you beat me? I never stopped chopping all day and you were taking breaks every couple hours!”

The older brother responded, “I was sharpening my ax every time I took a break.”

The younger brother hadn’t stopped once to sharpen his ax all day. By noon he was working twice as hard as his older brother with less than half the results.

The Lesson

When we attack something with all of our might, we need to counterbalance that ‘push’ by giving time to sharpen our ax. This can come in many forms, but ultimately it helps us keep us from getting burned out in one area or another.

For some this might be spending quality time with family after a hard push at work that requires extra hours at the office. For others it might be some alone time after friends come in town for the weekend and we host. And still for some it can be diving into a project wholeheartedly after never really committing themselves to anything prior.

To be the most effective versions of our selves, we should to take counterbalancing measures our lives to stay sharp. We can work as hard as we want, but if we’re using a dull ax we won’t be able to give our best.

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How do you sharpen your ax? 

Connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your successes (& failures) on the subject. 

P.S. 12 Days till Christmas!