Entrepreneurs Share Their Strategic Coach Results After Year 1

This is probably the easiest blog post we’ve ever written or ever will write! Three open and articulate entrepreneurs talk candidly about joining Strategic Coach — all experiencing initial “leap of faith” fear — and about their Year 1 experience that followed, including their results.
If you’ve been thinking (and thinking and thinking) about The Strategic Coach Program and whether it’s right for you, read every word of this blog and watch the video. We’re trying hard to stay objective, but we admit these three Coach entrepreneurs make it difficult.
Real experiences straight from Program participants.
Hugo, Shawn, and Scott each focus on a different perspective of their Year 1 experience in Strategic Coach, hitting on the three key areas that make Strategic Coach the top coaching program for successful entrepreneurs.
1. Hugo Brooks — One-Of-A-Kind Community
Company: Brand Dynamics Ltd., London, UK
Industry: High Tech/Brand Development
Insight: Hugo knows he already has what it takes to succeed (we call it “batteries included”), but says Strategic Coach gives him the extra clarity and support to accomplish even his biggest goals.

 

In his words:

Strategic Coach is a safe environment with entrepreneurs just like you, trying to accomplish the same thing as you.
Everyone who shows up is willing to participate in something that is going to improve their life.
Comprehensive entrepreneurial tools cover everything you can think of — all your questions will be answered.
The Program is real and relevant to today. I walk away knowing how to interpret everything — tomorrow. I think that’s amazing and powerful.
Your coach is not a teacher, but an experienced entrepreneur like you and me. They’re one of us.
It seemed like a huge commitment to make at first. Looking back after a year, the reward has been exponentially greater than the investment. I can prove that in money terms.

“Being in a room with people who have the same objective, who are also from different backgrounds and places in their journey, is incredibly rewarding, stimulating, and supportive. I don’t get that anywhere else in my life.”
2. Shawn Shepheard — Noteworthy Growth
Company: Shawn Shepheard: Coach, Speaker, And Author, Pickering, ON
Industry: Coaching and Training
Insight: As a coach himself, Scott had an “aha!” moment and asked himself, “How dare I coach people and not seek out coaching for myself?’”

 

In his words:

What’s different now is that I have a structure in place that makes me work on my future every single day.
“What’s different now is that I have a structure in place that makes me work on my future every single day.”Click To Tweet
The workshops actually keep you on track, which leads to new opportunities and growth.
Coach is a brilliant combination of lessons and learning in the workshops, and time in between the quarters to apply what works for you.
The beauty of the experience is that we talk about our real life struggles and can learn from each other and grow.
There’s an immediate connection. There are very honest conversations; nobody holds back. We address the big questions in life. As entrepreneurs, there is nowhere else we can do this.
We’re not spoken to; we work together as a group. You hear about and even see the changes in people — like weight loss for example!
Embarrassingly, it took me nine years to join. I regret waiting so long — this is home for me.

“A lot of people who are really close to me personally and professionally have said, ‘Something’s changed about you, what’s different?’ The answer is Coach. This is ridiculously the best business decision I’ve ever made.”
3. Scott Proposki — Coaching Support Network
Company: Head Shots In A Minute, Lawrence, MA
Industry: Photography
Fun Fact: Scott has worked with National Geographic, Google, and The White House! (He was invited to the White House to photograph former President Barack Obama!)

 

In his words:

Before Strategic Coach, I was on the go all the time. It’s helped me slow down and strategically plan my next moves on my goals and to restructure my life in a way that is more aligned with who I am.
I now find peace in slowing down, which was hard for me to do. The pressure is off, and I have comfort in knowing that I have time to do everything I want to do.
A serendipitous moment: On my way to my first Strategic Coach workshop, I met Ray Bourque, one of the greatest NHL hockey players, at the Boston airport. In answer to Ray’s question, I told him was on my way to see my business coach. He shared his insights about having coaches since he was 12 years old, and how coaching played a huge role in his success. This chance encounter really solidified my decision to join Strategic Coach. I showed up 100% excited and committed.
A 911 call to Coach! I was in the middle of a huge business deal that wasn’t going according to plan. I couldn’t even think straight about what to do. I made what I call my “911 call” to Kory, my Program Advisor. She helped me to slow down and make the strategic decisions that were needed, and I ended up making a lot of money on that deal — with great support from Coach. Gosh! It just makes so much sense to have a coach!

“As I wheel into the peak performance of my life, to have such a supportive structure in place, and with everything I have learned so far, I’m really excited about the next three years of the Program. There is just no turning back.”





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How A Bigger Purpose Takes Your Decision-Making To A Whole New Level

Listen to the podcast below or subscribe to the Multiplier Mindset Podcast on iTunes.
How A Bigger Purpose Takes Your Decision-Making To A Whole New Level


If you look at almost any entrepreneur — just starting out, successful, or somewhere in between — one thing they’ll all have in common is that they’ve battled or are currently battling complexity.
Complexity is an unyielding barrier to growth, both business and personal. And because complexity can be overwhelming, the smart decision-making needed to move you past any obstacles is compromised. This can even be game-ending.
Is this what being an entrepreneur is supposed to be like? In a word, no.
You need a strategy for dealing with complexity in order to continue growing in a simpler, more enjoyable, more rewarding way that’s also fun for everyone in your company, you included. Dan Sullivan sums it up like this: “To multiply, first you need to simplify.”
A winning strategy from a seasoned entrepreneur.
Lee Brower is one of our outstanding associate coaches, a 22-year participant in The Strategic Coach Program, and a successful entrepreneur in the Salt Lake City area.
Lee knows all about rapid growth and complexity, and the constant decision-making that still needs to happen. He uses a strategy that can instantly change the way you think about your bigger future as well as bring simplicity that you may never have thought possible to your life today.
Like Dan Sullivan, Lee believes in the power of a good question, and he adds a twist: Ask yourself a question you’ve never asked yourself before. It might sound too simplistic to have any possible effect on your future growth, but here’s what happens in your brain when you do that.
Suddenly, your thoughts have to rearrange themselves in response to a new question. It’s this rearranging process that benefits decision-making by producing new answers to old problems and moving you forward with each decision made.
Asking the questions that get results.
When Lee first started with Strategic Coach, he decided on an objective that got him in a questioning frame of mind. As he tells it, “Very early on in Coach, I decided that one of my objectives would be to leave each quarterly workshop asking a question that I’d never asked myself before. I wondered what the result of that would be.”
This practice soon became a crucial strategy in turning around a devastating business setback. Lee explains, “When I took a hit during the 2007 financial crisis, I could have said, ‘I have to do this, I need to do that, I’ve got to do something.’”
But rather than coming from that mindset of scarcity, which is almost always based on fear, Lee called up his practice of asking himself the right questions focused on his bigger purpose in life. This in turn made it clear what was most important to get started on right away. Achieving that kind of focused simplicity — focusing on one thing, solving that, and moving on to the next — is the key, and as a result, your mind is freed up to make the right decisions.
What’s the one question …
When it comes to one question people should ask themselves, Lee believes that there is no one specific question, but all the questions should have this in common: They’re questions you’ve never asked yourself before.
“This gives you answers you’ve never heard before, and believe me, your life will change,” he says.
Lee also gave this piece of advice to set up the conditions for smart decision-making. “First, make sure that you have a vision for a future that’s bigger than your current business — a bigger purpose. The reason is that when we try to make meaningful decisions in the present without knowing what our bigger purpose is, we’re not making a decision based on what is most important to us. Having a clear picture of your bigger purpose focuses you and helps you make those meaningful decisions in the present.
“Often, as entrepreneurs, our decisions come down to money, and that might not be the best decision in a lot of situations. When you have a bigger purpose, all you have to ask yourself is whether your decision is going to support your bigger purpose or not. You don’t have to ask what’s next or worry about it, so you’re always in motion.”
When you get clear on your bigger purpose, you get clear on what you have to do today.Click To Tweet
Keep in motion: Lee walks the talk.
If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll face a lot of tough decision-making and obstacles to growth. Lee has a strategy for asking himself the right questions to keep moving forward that might work for you too.
“Every time I hear myself say that I need to do something,” he says, “a statement that comes from a scarcity mindset rather than an abundance mindset, I turn it into a question: What small step can I take today that will provide more freedom in my life? What small step can I take that will give me more time off? Or, what small step can I take today that will open up more doors to opportunity? These small decisions add up.”
Lee’s “small-steps mindset” bears thinking about: “It’s all about keeping in motion. In life we create too many finish lines. When we set goals, we set finish lines. Why not set goals with key milestones? Why not be in progress all the time?”
Why not start right now?



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A Winning Resolution To The Capitalism Debate

Listen to the podcast below or subscribe to the Inside Strategic Coach podcast on iTunes.
A Winning Resolution To The Capitalism Debate


As long as I’ve been alive, the most dominant contentious issue that people debate has been capitalism.
I’ve read all of the major books on the subject, and I understand the thoughts of those who think of capitalism as a generally negative force in the world. They think that capitalism creates enormous amounts of inequality, that it creates a wide gap between the wealthiest people and those that don’t have much.
I realized about 20 years ago that there’s never going to be a resolution to the debate about capitalism. The people who are pro-capitalism seem religiously fanatical about it, and the people who are against it are also very doctrinaire and dogmatic in their ways.
So I began entertaining the idea in a new way, and in observing things in the entrepreneurial world, I got an entirely new perspective on it.
Putting the focus on “Capableism.”
The word “capability” kept occurring to me as I noticed that entrepreneurs grow by expanding their own capabilities and then having such success that they can use some surplus earnings to acquire the capabilities of others. The latter can happen by hiring team members or specialists out in the marketplace.
Right from the beginning, the central force of human progress has been the growth of individual and then organizational capability. Throughout human history, the most successful individuals, groups, and societies have been the ones where there’s been a constant build-up of cooperating capabilities.
So capitalism is not the central force on the planet; it’s just one of the capabilities that’s been sparked from what I’ve termed “Capableism.”
“I think every person on the planet desires to be more capable.” – Dan SullivanClick To Tweet
All about capabilities.
People love being in situations where they can focus on their best capability and have a lot of other people’s capabilities support what they do. Together, they can produce much bigger and more enjoyable results than they could otherwise.
Some say that this is a result of capitalism, but capitalism is simply the organizing structure that’s being used. The dominant motivation for everyone in the situation is to be more capable.
Capability means control, it means results, and it means cooperation.
With a Capableism structure and philosophy, you don’t have to do things you’re not good at. Other people can do things they’re good at, and you can get the benefits of the results of one another’s work. Together, you can exponentially create things that you couldn’t do individually.
At its best, capitalism is an operating system that maximizes the diversity of human abilities to create much larger results than any other operating system that’s ever been created.
It’s ever-expanding, and at the center of it is cooperation at a new level: among strangers.
Nowadays, things happen for us in a way that’s faster, easier, and cheaper. Capitalism is an enormous factor, but at the heart of everything is something that’s universal, and that’s Capableism.




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A Solid Foundation For Major Growth: 5 Resources For Entrepreneurs

When we talk about growth at Strategic Coach, it’s always a big conversation, and it always revolves around 10x growth.
Last year, we set our biggest goal yet — a five-year “Moonshot” growth goal — and the whole team is committed to ramping up our game. New ideas and initiatives, and exciting changes, big and small, are being implemented by every team in the company.
Change is good, but …
When you’re talking about this type of exponential growth, major change is a given. But, for major change to happen successfully in any company, it’s essential to have a strong foundation to withstand it and keep it sustainable.
Building a strong foundation takes time and effort by everyone in the company. And one of the most important cornerstones of a solid foundation is teamwork.
At Coach, we work continually to strengthen our teamwork, creating a working environment where each team member is growing and, in turn, contributing more and more to the “Moonshot” goal we have in our sights.
“For major change to happen successfully in any company, it’s essential to have a strong foundation to withstand it and keep it sustainable.”Click To Tweet
Our 5 go-to resources for powerful teamwork.
We love sharing these outside resources for entrepreneurs — we consider them essential teamwork tools — because we believe in them and we see proof every single day that they work.

Kolbe
The Kolbe A Index gives you the hard-wired “why” you do what you do. Once you know and understand your Kolbe profile, you’ll know the secret to how you create the greatest value for those around you, which is the key to success, especially in an entrepreneurial company that is always based on results!
INTERESTING FACT: Everyone applying for a position at Strategic Coach completes a Kolbe A Index even before being considered for an in-person interview. It makes for fewer hiring mistakes because it pinpoints a good fit for the position. The whole team has access to everyone else’s Kolbe profile so we can tailor how we work with one another.
? Find out more at Kolbe.com

StrengthsFinder
Developed by the Gallup Organization, the StrengthsFinder assessment gives you your top five strengths (out of 34, which you can also access) that you can then build on and use to excel in your work and personal life. From a company standpoint, knowing our team members’ strengths gets the right people doing the right things to produce the best possible results.
INTERESTING FACT: We all started off learning our top five strengths, which was incredibly useful. But then we wanted more. Now everyone on the team knows their top 34 strengths, which is not only helpful, but really interesting and fun to know. It explains a lot!
? Find out more at strengthsfinder.com

PRINT
Most of us might think we know what motivates us, but PRINT takes us further to our Unconscious Motivators. These are nine hidden drivers that operate at a very deep level and are responsible for all our thoughts, feelings, and actions. When we’re able to satisfy our Unconscious Motivators, we are positive, productive, and our highest performing selves — our Best Selves.
INTERESTING FACT: Our Unconscious Motivators are like the underwater part of an iceberg, occupying significant space in our brains and holding a vast amount of concealed, yet crucial information.
? Find out more at PaulHertzGroup.com

The Collaborative Way
The Collaborative Way is a designed way of relating to one another that harnesses the collective intelligence, imagination, and spirit of a company’s team. When its eight fundamentals are practiced consistently, it results in a faster and more agile organization, extraordinary teamwork, and a more satisfying work environment — an enviable strategic advantage in a changing global marketplace.
INTERESTING FACT: Our entire team of over 100 is now working to integrate The Collaborative Way into our everyday lives (work and home) in how we listen, speak, support, commit, appreciate, include, and align.
? Find out more at collaborativeway.com

DISC
Based on four basic personality types or temperaments, DISC provides the clues to why we most often feel, think and act the way we do, which is helpful to know as part of a larger team in an ever-changing entrepreneurial company. Understanding our DISC assessment can mean better results, more fun, more peace, and better understanding and less frustration when working with others.
INTERESTING FACT: The DISC model breaks the four main types of personality styles into its letters. “D” stands for Dominant, Direct, Doer. “I” stands for Inspiring, Interesting, Impulsive. “S” stands for Supportive, Steady, Stable. “C” stands for Cautious, Competent, Careful.
? Find out more at discpersonalitytesting.com






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It’s Time To Stop Doing Energy-Draining Activities

So many people believe that having to do things you don’t enjoy is simply a part of life. They’ve bought into a message that life isn’t about having everything the way you want it to be.
But the reason you became an entrepreneur is to have things the way you want them to be. You didn’t become an entrepreneur so you could spend the rest of your life putting up with things you don’t like.
Entrepreneurial freedom.
Being an entrepreneur means having the freedom to do what you love. But even still, business owners will make excuses for doing energy-draining activities by claiming that it’s just the nature of the business or the marketplace.
While it may very well have been that way in the 20th century, in the 21st century, with all the talent available either through relationship networks or electronic networks, you can find ways to extract yourself from situations and relationships that are irritating by finding the right person or system to take them over.
The point of being an entrepreneur is having the freedom to do what you love.Click To Tweet
Tell the truth.
Some people can numb themselves to the fact that an activity is irritating. The biggest obstacle that has to be overcome to eliminate your irritating, energy-draining activities is to tell the truth about what irritates you.
Once you’re honest with yourself about the activities you’re doing in your business that you find irritating, boring, and energy-draining, you can make a commitment to stop doing them. All the help in the world that you need to do that is available to you, but not until you tell the truth about it. The first person you have to sell on getting rid of the irritations in your life is yourself.
Identify your “irritating activities.”
When one of my clients first joined The Strategic Coach Program, he had a very fast growing business with an almost unlimited amount of opportunity, but he was doing an activity he didn’t like. One of his responsibilities was to do bidding on all of the jobs, and as they were growing so quickly, this used up an enormous amount of his time.
When I shared my model about the three types of activities that take up our time—Irritating, Okay, and Fascinating—there was a sudden realization on his part that this activity of doing the bidding, which he would do late at night and on weekends, was one he found really irritating and energy-draining. It was a breakthrough.
He told the truth about it and then he calculated how many hours he would get back if he stopped doing the bidding, and it was a huge incentive to eliminate this activity.
Gaining back time.
He put together a job description and, within the next 90 days, he had an applicant whose passion was the technique and technology of bidding.
At the end of the first year in the Program, he stood up and said, “I kept track of how much I got freed up from having someone take over this irritating activity, and in the first year, it was 1,000 hours.”
He said, “I felt totally freed up to have really great scouting missions out in the world and meet new people. Our whole planning for the expansion of our company jumped because I wasn’t tired. Every expansion before was forcing me into an activity that was more and more irritating. I didn’t know how much more of it I could take.”
In addition to improving his work life, his home life also improved—instead of working late, he was spending time with his family and friends. And everybody at the company found that he was so much more excited and pleasant to be around.
Not only is it not necessary to continue doing activities that drain your energy, but eliminating irritating activities from your life benefits you, your business, and everyone around you.


STOP DOING ACTIVITIES THAT IRRITATE YOU.

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A Parent’s Perfectionism And A Hard Lesson Learned

Listen to the podcast below or subscribe to the Multiplier Mindset Podcast on iTunes.
A Parent’s Perfectionism And A Hard Lesson Learned


Early on in The Strategic Coach® Program, we introduce a concept called The Gap, a state of mind highly common among ambitious entrepreneurs — and one that can cause a great deal of harm.
Quite simply, The Gap is the space between where we are currently in any given situation and where we want to be — our ideal. As we move toward our goal, we mentally measure our progress, and here’s where it gets tricky.
Most of us measure forward, looking ahead at the ideal goal and seeing that we’re always falling short. Any tendency toward perfectionism makes it even worse. At Coach, we learn to measure backward from where we are now to where we first started.
Measuring backward, we can immediately see the progress we’ve made. The feeling of accomplishment, even in small steps, keeps us moving forward with confidence rather than falling into The Gap and its accompanying feeling of failure. Measuring backward is how goals are reached and fulfilled! It sounds so logical and so simple. Why don’t we measure backward all the time instead of choosing the perfectionist’s route to our ideal outcome?
Once we truly understand how easy it is to put ourselves — and those around us — into The Gap, and how great life outside The Gap can be, there’s no measuring forward again — as Chad Johnson shares in his honest and deeply humbling story.
A quick, and heartbreaking, trip into The Gap.
Chad Johnson is a remarkable entrepreneur in The Strategic Coach Program as well as one of our exceptional associate coaches. He is also a devoted husband and father of 11 children. It is from his family life that he shares an unforgettable story about how quickly The Gap can propel us into thinking we’ve failed. This experience provided him with a powerful life lesson that will resonate with many.
As a Strategic Coach client and coach, Chad is well aware of The Gap and its pitfalls. Yet, one day he found himself heaping all the negativity of The Gap on his children in one unthinking moment.
Chad explains, “In reality, we fall in and out of The Gap all the time, depending on how we measure our progress — and we put others around us in The Gap, too, which is an unforgivable thing. In the story I’m going to share, I, sadly, had no awareness that I was actually doing this to my children. Their faces told me that I was.”
Smooth sailing on a family project until perfectionism showed up.
Chad and his family live on a farm in north central Oregon. On the property, there was a 6,000 square foot barn, where they had remodeled the upper level into a great family space with a gym, an office, and a library. Down below on the main level, it was a true barn, with a tractor, other farm equipment and implements, and a lot more “stuff.”
As Chad tells it, “One Saturday, I said to the kids, ‘We’re going to do an ‘80/20’ on the barn today.’”
“An 80/20 meant that we were going to go in there and make a great improvement,” Chad explains. ”We’d put the bikes away, organize everything, sweep out the mangers, and so on — but not to the point of 100 percent perfection. I know that aiming for 100 percent can easily lead to falling into The Gap.”
Divide and conquer was the strategy.
Chad and the kids broke up into two teams, an upstairs team and a downstairs team, having discovered over the years that divide and conquer works well for getting things done in a large family.
“We turned on the music, set a timer for two hours, and decided we were going to bang this out before lunch. When the timer went off two hours later, I headed down the stairs with my upstairs team and saw my downstairs team looking up at me. I’m not sure exactly what was going through their minds, but I’m sure they were excited to show me what they had accomplished.”
As Chad reached the bottom of the stairs, something caught his eye. It was a small section where they stored the odd pieces of wood that didn’t fit along the wall where all the other lumber was kept. To Chad’s eyes, it looked like these scraps of wood had just been pitched into this four- by six-foot space.
The one thing.
Chad continues, “I called them over and, without even thinking, started to pick on the one thing, the one thing out of 3,000 square feet — the one little spot that wasn’t perfect. I started to berate them about not caring, not being able to do quality work, about just chucking stuff into that space.
“Immediately, I saw them go from being so proud to show me the work they’d done to something I wasn’t expecting. They had been so pumped, thinking that I was going to love what they’d accomplished, but in the space of a minute, I took them to a place of utter failure. I deflated them completely.
“It was crazy because they’d done far more than I’d asked. They’d far surpassed the 80/20 we try to aim for. Everything had looked beautiful in the barn except for that one thing. And to see myself suck the life out of them was a moment I’ll never forget.”
Chad’s children turned and walked toward the house. That’s when it really hit him. He wondered what he had been thinking. His aim was always to build his children up, but he realized that in that moment, he had just destroyed them.
Chad admits, “I had put them in that place where you’re not enough, you’ve failed, and you should be ashamed of yourself. All of this, when they had done such amazing work! And yet, my tendency was to find that one thing.”
Aim for perfection, and you invariably set yourself up, instead, to fail.Click To Tweet
Asking for forgiveness.
Chad called out to them and asked them to come back. He says, “They turned around, expecting more abuse, probably.”
As Chad apologized and asked for their forgiveness, he told them what was true — that they had far surpassed his expectations, that what he had called them out for was such a small thing compared to all the great work they had done. He continues, “I told them I was proud of them, and I saw them come back to life.”
Always on the perfectionism lookout.
We all go into The Gap, the by-product of our high ideals and perfectionism. The important thing is to recognize you’re there and get yourself out as fast as you can.
As Chad finishes his story, he tells us, “This experience showed me that I was not only putting people I love deeply into The Gap. I was also doing it to people like my team, who I care very much about and who look up to me and depend on me.
“These are all people who don’t have the benefit of knowing about The Gap, or how to get themselves out of it, and I wasn’t conscious of that. But that moment in the barn with my children taught me an important and powerful life lesson I’ll always remember.”




GET OUT OF “THE GAP.”

You can be successful and happy or successful and unhappy. The difference is in how you measure your progress.
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Taking Time Off Can Increase Your Productivity And Better Your Company

Listen to the podcast below or subscribe to the Inside Strategic Coach podcast on iTunes.
Taking Time Off Can Increase Your Productivity And Better Your Company


For decades, I’ve taken 155 days off every year.
Taking time off to this degree, particularly as an entrepreneur, is almost unheard of in North America. But I’ve found that it’s not only a benefit to me in my non-work life, it’s also made me more effective professionally and been of enormous benefit to my team members and my organization.
Stop the burnout.
There’s a sort of bragging that takes place in the entrepreneurial world related to how much time one spends working. Entrepreneurs wear busyness as a badge of honor, and there’s contempt for entrepreneurs who need to take vacation time. You’ll hear people say, “Well, my work is my free time” or “I don’t really work; I just play.” Many entrepreneurs don’t draw a line at all when it comes to taking time off.
In my experience, this makes entrepreneurs one-dimensional. I can’t help but wonder what their relationships and their general appreciation of life is like when they do nothing but work. There are so many other aspects of life besides work to experience and explore.
Not only that, but the quality of their work and enjoyment of their work suffers when they’re burnt out. Free time isn’t just a reward for hard work; it’s a necessary prerequisite for doing good work. Taking time to rejuvenate renews your energy and creativity. And taking a number of days off the table for free time leaves fewer days for working, which has the effect of making you more productive when you’re at work.
“You don’t know how strong your team is until they can’t phone you.” —Dan SullivanClick To Tweet
Another negative aspect of an entrepreneur’s work addiction is the effect it has on their organizations. It often leads to an expectation that everyone who works for the company will also have very little free time.
This leads to a high burnout rate for team members. They feel oppressed because they can’t have personal lives, and it’s expected that they’ll always come in early, work late, and work weekends. This makes them defensive, makes them dull, and makes it so that there’s a very high turnover rate, because you can’t have a life when you work for a company with a workaholic philosophy.
The opposite happens when an entrepreneur allows themselves the freedom of taking time off. Then, their team members also have the freedom to have a life, and this makes them more productive during workdays. Taking free time helps both you and your team members avoid burnout.
Making the most of your workdays.
Because it’s a rule that I only work 210 days a year, I can never say, “Well, this project is going to take longer, so I’ll cancel this scheduled day off.”
What this means is that during every one of those 210 days, I’m getting as much done as possible. I’m much more focused because I have fewer days during which to get things done.
A big part of this is looking outside of myself for ways to get results. I’m always looking at who on my team can take something off my plate. This is also how teamwork constantly gets expanded.
The Self-Managing Company solution.
So that I’m not thinking about working when I’m taking time off, I have to trust that my team knows what they’re doing.
On days when I’m not working, team members at the company are fully responsible for making decisions, because there’s no contact between me and anyone at the office.
I’ve passed up on great opportunities that have come up while I’m taking time off, and I’ve done it without hesitation because I know that the team members who are working that day are developing opportunities themselves, and that I make enough opportunities during the 210 days a year that are my workdays.
Allowing myself to take 155 days off every year has benefited my health, my relationships, my productivity, my company, and the lives of all of the people who work at my company.
All entrepreneurs have the opportunity to benefit in the same way. All they need to do is grant themselves the freedom of taking time off.


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News Year’s Resolution Ideas That Everyone Can Get Behind

The end of the year is a natural time to try to integrate your past, present, and future. As always, though, it’s important to use these three time frames in a way that fills you with confidence and excitement instead of stressing you out.
That’s why we all love and hate New Year’s resolutions: They fill us with resolve and determination, but if we don’t stick to their high ideals, they end up feeling like embarrassing failures.
The problem with resolutions is that they get the time frames all wrong: They’re about trying to fix something from your past out in your future.
Instead, try approaching your goals for the new year this way:
Look back over the past year and celebrate your progress. How far did you come? Why is this a triumph? We often forget to recognize and acknowledge our wins, but this celebration fills you up with morale.
Look at the projects and relationships in your life you’re most excited about and want to carry forward. This great foundation gives you momentum.
Ask yourself what you want—the things you have a desire to experience and achieve in the future, which might be completely new, unprecedented, with no ties to the past. This charges up your motivation.
Always make your future bigger than your past.Click To Tweet
This thinking turns your past, present, and future into useful tools rather than another “stick” to punish yourself with. The “stick” method is discouraging, guilt-inducing, and doesn’t work anyway. Just ask anyone who makes hifalutin resolutions on New Year’s Day—usually to correct what they did the night before!
May your new year be the biggest and best ever, full of challenging and exciting goals that make you grow.


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The Power Of Unique Ability®

From time to time, we tap into a deep well of wisdom by inviting Strategic Coach clients to share their secrets to success. This post is from Joe Polish, legendary marketer, founder of Genius Network, co-founder of ILoveMarketing.com, and creator of 10xTalk.com. Joe is a valued advocate of Strategic Coach and the power of Unique Ability.
If there’s one skill to master that allows you to make more money doing what you love, it’s Unique Ability. Unique Ability is a concept developed by one of my best friends, Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach. Dan has done more to help guide my thinking, actions, and confidence in the areas of value creation than anyone else on the planet.
The secret to being successful doing what you love.
Put simply, your Unique Ability is the set of natural talents you’re already amazing at, that give you energy, and that you love doing. When you spend more and more time working in your Unique Ability, you’ll start to see that’s where growth and money lie.
Then, the idea is to hire other people with Unique Abilities that support your own. You want to hire people with the behaviors and skills you’re weak at. If you spend your time doing things that aren’t within your skill set and Unique Ability, it’s like ripping up money and throwing it away.
People say, “Well, I can’t hire anyone because ______.” Yet, it’s hiring people to support your Unique Ability that allows you to do what you do best.
Your Unique Ability is where growth and money lie.Click To Tweet
Investment, not cost.
All of this is an investment, not a cost. Those who don’t get anything out of collaborating with team members look at everything as a cost. If you’re thinking about how much something costs, you’re trying to measure what you’re getting out of it. Instead, when you look at things as an investment, you’ll be thinking about how to enhance and improve everything you do.
The development of your Unique Ability will never cost you anything; it saves you money, it makes you money, and it saves you time.
Everything aligned with who you truly are.
When you aren’t living in your Unique Ability, life is hard.
When you’re mentally doing something that’s incongruent with what you like and out of alignment with what you do and who you are, it drains the life out of you. It takes enormous amounts of energy to live incongruently with who you are. The same is true when you try to adopt someone else’s methodology or system. If it’s not something that aligns with you, it can put you into a negative place.
On the other hand, when you’re living in your Unique Ability, you become more generous and more confident, and you’re much, much happier. You create value for others and for yourself. You create win-win situations.
Figure out where your energy comes from and how it’s sustained. Within that is your Unique Ability. When you live from that place, you’ll not only make a lot more money doing what you love, you’ll have a sense of satisfaction about every part of your work and life.

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For Entrepreneurs, Money CAN Buy Happiness

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For Entrepreneurs, Money CAN Buy Happiness


No matter what you do or how much money you make, the question arises: Can money buy happiness?
The answer is that yes, it can—if you use your money to buy back your time.
Everything is abundant.
Almost everything has gotten cheaper. What you’d get paid for an hour of your time today can pay for a lot more than what an hour of your time could pay for 25 years ago.
This applies to everything from electronics to cars to vacations. The efficiencies being built into massive cooperation in the marketplace are making it easier, faster, and cheaper to provide products and services.
As a result, things don’t have the same impact on our happiness that they did when there was more scarcity. Material goods and luxuries that used to be a source of happiness don’t have the same effect on us.
Buying time.
But there is one way of using your money that can make you happier than any other way, and that is to buy back your time. You do this by taking an activity you don’t like doing or that’s keeping you from doing a more stimulating and rewarding activity, and pay someone else to do that activity. When you use your money to free yourself up to do something you like better, that’s how you buy happiness.
This is what I’ve observed in coaching more than 6,000 entrepreneurs. When you spend money so you can do something you’re much more interested in, or that’s much more enjoyable, you’ll be happy with the use of that money. In a very simple way, you’re using that money to buy happiness.
“The freedom of time is becoming the most desirable reason to use your money.” – Dan SullivanClick To Tweet
Increasing happiness for everyone.
There are things that entrepreneurs might not like doing but that are crucial to their businesses. Yet this doesn’t mean they have to do those activities themselves. It means the time spent doing those activities has to be bought by delegating them to someone else. Remember, though, that no matter how much you don’t like the activity, there’s someone out there who would love doing it as much as you love doing the activities you find the most fascinating.
My response to my daily life as an entrepreneur is an emotional one before it’s an intellectual one. I give myself 100 percent freedom to say exactly what I like and don’t like, and this has led me to deciding to spend as much time as possible in the activities I want to be in, using my money to pay people who love doing the activities I don’t like doing.
When you do this, that’s buying a lot of happiness, not only for yourself, but for every person in your company who’s getting paid to do something they love.


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