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Be Thankful; It's All in Your Mind

A Financial Tailspin sucks! Don’t compound it.

We’re going through some … interesting … times, financially. People feel insecure, established institutions are in desperate need of bailout (funny how attractive socialism becomes when you’re the one who needs the handout) and the world economy seems to be teetering on the brink. Now’s a great time to realize: it’s all in our minds.

I mean this quite literally. Have you seen “Money as Debt?” It’s an excellent 47-minute video on where money comes from. It tells how our current system came to be. It highlights flaws in the system and offers some alternatives, all with a tasty dose of conspiracy theory thrown in here and there(*). You can watch the video here: https://www.steverrobbins.com/r/moneyasdebt

Money is literally nothing more than an idea. It’s a promise we make to deliver a good, a service, or more money at a later date. Why is Bill Gates a billionaire? Because the rest of us agree that he is. We also agree to give him our stuff if he gives us enough money. But it’s all an agreement. Because it’s an agreement, we take action on it, and it’s our actions that have real-world consequences.

“Don’t worry, be happy.”

Bobby McFerrin’s song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” is right on the money. At any given moment, you may or may not be able to control what’s actually happening around you. But you can always choose your attitude about it.

I was in a meeting earlier this year, discussing a key feature of entrepreneurship: the ability to see opportunity where others see problems. Just for jollies, I decided to try spending a week deliberately asking, “Where’s the opportunity here?” every time a problem cropped up. Every single time I asked the question, I was able to find an answer. Often, in mere seconds.

The housing bubble gave many time in an elevated lifestyle

Then I asked, “What’s the upside of the financial crisis?” You know, one answer is this: millions have had the chance to live far beyond their means for many years. While we don’t much care for the consequences, at least they got to enjoy a standard of living they couldn’t have otherwise afforded. I’m serious about this, by the way. Of course it’s natural to be upset when losing your job, your credit, your home, or your car. But being upset won’t change anything. It will just make you feel bad. You can also choose to feel thankful that you had those things to begin with.

Be a Thanksgiving Gratitude Geek

Are there problems in the financial world right now? Yup. And we can live through those problems giving all our attention to the downside or giving all our attention to the opportunities and the upside.

My suggestion to you: spend this Thanksgiving dwelling on the upside. Ask yourself, “what do I have to be thankful for?” and make a big long list. Help everyone around you do the same thing. They say what we need is more optimism in the economy. Optimism isn’t something “out there,” it’s one of the few things we have control over. So let’s exercise that control and see the glass as 10% full, not 90% empty. Because we can’t always change the outside reality, but we can certainly choose our inner reality.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving. Here are some of the things I’m thankful for:

  • Friends and community
  • Hot running showers
  • Democracy
  • My four-year-old iPod that still works great
  • The chance to teach high school students at an after-school program
  • Zipcar
  • My podcast
  • Friends and community

(*) I love conspiracy theories! I always like to remind myself that just because someone’s paranoid doesn’t mean the conspiracy doesn’t truly exist.

Happy or Successful? Which will you pursue?

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Click here to listen to this as a podcast.

Click here to download the Happy versus Successful graphic

On a recent birthday I was looking back at the strategies that my friends from high school and college and I employed to get where we are today. We assumed that success would bring happiness, and as far I can tell, we were wrong. It turns out that the two are separate, even though marketers would have us believe otherwise.The slogan for Cadillac is “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit.” Of course what your mind fills in is Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. As if a $50,000.00 car will actually make you happier. And maybe it will. But keep in mind, if your life fundamentally sucks, it’s gonna keep on sucking the moment you step out of the car and onto the concrete. So, if the two are different—if happiness and success are not the same—what’s the best life strategy?

We are certainly taught to believe that being successful will make us happy. Society tells us, our parents tell us, our teachers tell us, students in high school as young as 12 and 13 are already being lectured about college. I take it to an extreme. I have a 5-year-old nephew, I am thinking about his college, I am thinking about his high school. It’s ridiculous; I am missing his entire childhood because I am so busy thinking about making him successful in the assumption that thus will he be happy.

I also find that in career coaching new MBAs, they have an almost religious belief that they can plan out a 20-year career path. They say things like, “I will make my money and then I will be happy. Then I will do the things that are meaningful.” Then, then, then. As if, among other things, you can even control whether “then” ever arrives.

So strategy number 1 is: pursue success and hope for happiness. The other strategy is to pursue happiness and meaning and find a way to make a living doing it. This is the strategy where happiness leads to success. Which one is better? Let’s see…

If you go for success and you become successful and you find a way to be happy doing it, yeah, you’re happy and successful. If you go for happiness and find a way to make money doing it, yeah, you’re happy and successful. So, in the case where you can achieve both, it doesn’t really matter which strategy you choose, you end up happy and successful.

But the point we rarely consider is what happens if everything doesn’t work out. If you define your life as pursuing success but you don’t actually find a way to be happy while doing it, or you get to that point where you have the money and now you don’t even know what makes you happy because you have spent the whole time pursuing success instead of happiness, well, great. You’re successful, but you’re not happy. You walk into an empty house surrounded by beautiful gorgeous things. You have a lot of friends and they like you. Why? Because you have a lot of nice things that they want to borrow. You buy a cat, the cat puts with you because you leave its automated feeding bowl in place while you go work at office. It actually hates you because you’re never around. You are too busy working, but at least it will pretend to purr every now and then.

On the other hand, if you go for happiness and aren’t successful, at least you will be happy and you will have a life full of meaning. They found one of the big things that helps people be happy, for example, it is having family and friends and community. So, if you are happy, but don’t quite make it to successful, you may wander into your one-bedroom tiny apartment and be surrounded by friends and family and people who love you and a cat that purrs because it recognizes you—it knows who you are and it appreciates the fact that you feed it. You may not have the money, but you will be happy.

So, in the case where the future works exactly the way we want it to, it doesn’t matter whether you pursue success and then find happiness or whether you pursue happiness and then find success. But in the case where you can’t guarantee the final outcome, it makes so much more sense to pursue happiness and hopefully you can find a way to be successful doing it.

I have spent my life up until very recently doing the opposite. I have spent my life pursuing success under the assumption that it would make me happy and it is not clear that it’s been worth it. Missing a weekend with friends so that I can work hard and earn enough money that I can take time off and … spend a weekend with friends. Hello? This doesn’t exactly make a whole lot of sense.

What I would like to invite you to do today is to examine your own life and your own motivations—How do you work? Are you pursuing success assuming that someday will bring happiness? Are you pursuing happiness looking for way to be successful while doing it? Are you getting both? And I would invite you to play around a little bit. Try doing something from the other camp and find out if that works for you.

If you’re a Type-A Personality Workaholic, skip a day of work, call in sick and do something that makes you happy, that’s meaningful, and that could be a taste of the life you could be living right now, maybe in exchange for money but maybe not. Because when you pursue happiness, you never know what kind of opportunities arise.

I am now one year into a three-year experiment of living my life to the extent that I can get my Type-A Personality to do so. I pursue the things that make me happy and have meaning. The bizarre part is my life is less predictable than ever before. The things I am getting involved with weren’t even on the radar screen a year-and-a-half ago, however, some of them are grander and more exciting than anything I could possibly have planned. Make a choice. Pursue success and find happiness or pursue happiness and find success. Either way you have a shot at both, but in one case you guarantee you will be happy.

The Tragedy of the Commons explained

How rational choice makes some markets fail

The Tragedy of the Commons is a situation where players cooperate or everyone loses, yet each individual has incentive not to cooperate. Also known as the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” here’s a sample Tragedy of the Commons: farmers graze their cows on a shared grassy area called the Commons. The Commons can support 100 cows. One hundred farmers each bring a cow, and the eatin’s good. But each farmer thinks, “If I bring one extra cow, it doubles my entire income and only puts a 1% drain on the Commons.” All 100 farmers think this, all bring one extra cow, and 200 cows quickly overgraze the Commons. It dies completely, and then, so do the cows, followed by the farmers.

Pollution fits this structure. The Commons is nature’s ability to absorb the pollution. The benefit of polluting to any one polluter is great–they save clean-up costs. But when every producer does this calculation, rivers and landscapes quickly become clogged with pollution.

Energy usage fits this structure. The Commons is energy. The benefit to living in a suburb and driving to work is huge–I get lots of land, a nice yard, and a big house, and pay relatively little for a car and gas. But when 350 million Americans all make this trade-off, we’re suddenly using 40% of the world’s oil driving prices up. We don’t know how this one plays out, yet, but it will be interesting, since our physical sprawl makes cars a survival necessity, not a choice, for almost everyone.

Advertising fits this structure. Any one advertiser can get great returns by sending you junk mail, putting ads on your favorite TV shows, and putting up billboards on your roads. When all advertisers do this, you get so overloaded with messages than now it takes 20 ad impressions for you to pick a product out of the crowd. So now all advertisers must advertise so much that they spend a fortune, and you get overloaded. I no longer even look at my paper mail, and I get around 6-10 pieces a day. A one-week trip brings me back to a stack of 60-100 items. It goes straight into the trash. So now, it’s not clear advertisers can reach me at all.

Littering fits this structure. Any one person finds it convenient to dump their trash on the ground, leaving it for someone else (mom?) to pick up. When everyone in a neighborhood does this, they end up living in a garbage heap. Eventually, no one even sees a point in using the trash can any more and the litter accelerates.

I also think social networking sites are a Tragedy of the Commons. I’m not yet completely sure, though. Time will tell.

The “Tragedy” Can Be Used for Good

The Tragedy works in reverse, too. There are times when no one person has incentive to do a good thing, yet a small contribution by every person adds up to a huge Good Thing. Consider building an interstate highway system. No one person could pay for it, and even if they could, they could never collect enough in revenue to maintain it and make it worthwhile. Yet building it brings great benefit to everyone. The neat thing is that if every person pays just a little bit, we collect enough in total to take on the project. That’s where taxes really shine as a financing device; they’re one of the few good ways to finance building shared resources. Everyone pays a relatively small amount, and we get services that give far more benefit.

Public schools are another example. It’s cheaper for us all to pay a little in taxes and end up with schools for everyone. (Yes, you can complain about the quality of our existing school system, but the quality problems have less to do with the funding and more to do with our model of education.)

Fire protection is another example. While typing this, I received a call from the Volunteer Fireman’s Committee asking for donations. It’s a scary request, as it implies I won’t get fire protection without paying. Yet I’m happy to pay for firemen through my taxes. That way, we all contribute, and we have a fire prevention infrastructure that benefits us all.

Managing the Tragedy is a Fundamental Role of Government

I believe Governments are the only players in our world who can manage the Tragedy of the Commons. Our markets are built on the assumption that each customer/supplier should be free to pursue their maximum self-interest. The Government introduces regulation, tariffs, etc. designed to spread the Commons risk among market players, so the market can function and produce what’s best for civilization overall.

Sadly, I don’t think politicians or voters consider this, so the mechanism fails. Regulation isn’t inherently good or bad; it’s simply the only way to avert certain Tragedies of the Commons. Taxes aren’t inherently good or bad (though many would like you to believe that for their own political agendas); they’re simply one way to raise funds for projects that would otherwise never happen due to Tragedies.

How to Set Salaries for Entrepreneurs

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“How to Set Salaries” is an article that first appeared on Entrepreneur.com in May, 2006.

Setting salaries for your staff is always a tricky thing to do. It’s especially hard if you’ve never done it before, because you probably don’t even know where to start. On the one hand, you want to pay enough to get the best possible talent. On the other hand, you don’t want to overpay. What’s an entrepreneur to do?

First of all, don’t panic. Remember that your goal is to attract good talent and pay them fairly… (continued at http://www.entrepreneur.com/humanresources/article159438.html)

Conquering the Stress of Uncertainty: Keeping Yourself Sane in an Uncertain World

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A reader writes: I could use some helpful tips in overcoming stress from not seeing success right away.

For many of us, the economic slowdown has meant less business. We can no longer count on steady growth and reliable money. It’s easy to become stressed when we aren’t seeing the results we expect.

In Western culture, we are rarely taught coping skills for uncertainty. It can be especially hard having patience and a clear mind when things aren’t going the way we want them to (witness our country’s difficulty with two weeks of uncertainty around our Y2K Presidential election!).

If you haven’t been seeing success right away, start by asking yourself “what constitutes success?” If you’re attached to an outcome—say, doing $10 million of sales in your first year—you’ll find that success is all-or-nothing; you’ve either reached the outcome or you haven’t. It may help you feel process to subdivide your goal into smaller pieces. Shoot for at least one milestone a week, so your progress is continuous. Your first week’s goal could be to get a face-to-face appointment with three prospects and land one sale. Each goal you meet will help you feel progress.

The key is that you’re not choosing your milestones just to manage the projects. This is about managing your emotions; choose milestones that will cause you to feel progress in your gut, even if the outside results aren’t there, yet.

You can also succeed with process goals. Process goals measure what you’re doing, not where you are. You’re shooting for three prospect appointments? You might set a process goal of calling 10 Widget Retailers from the phonebook daily. That’s a process goal. If you find you’re missing your process goals, asking yourself why can lead to you choosing a better way to reach your outcome. For example, if you miss your ten daily calls because there are only three Widget Retailers in the phone book, it’s a signal that you’ll need another way to find prospects. Process goals give you the chance for daily "wins" on your way to your bigger goals.

If you find yourself stressed even when you reach smaller progress goals, you might want to tackle the stress directly. Meditate for a half hour a day, get some exercise, and set aside time for yourself to relax and unwind. Choose a time for the day to be over and when it is, go home and do something completely unrelated to work. It can be a challenge, but separating work and home life can save your sanity. At least three times a week, leave your office by 6 p.m. and go play. Clear your mind. Get a massage. Indulge yourself in a bubble bath. Treat yourself well! (My personal touchstone is yoga.)

Of course, it’s possible your business might not be truly sustainable. The market may not be there, the distribution can’t be worked out, or competition makes it impossible to build a business that makes money. Set boundaries for yourself to keep yourself healthy. Decide now how much time/money/effort you are willing to put into the business, so you don’t someday wake up having overspent yourself. Also, think hard on how you’ll know if the business really won’t work. Just setting those limits can help. If you decide three months of consecutive losses is the signal that your specialty Pokeman Roller Skate Shop has outlived its usefulness, then you’ll know when it’s time to quit. And knowing there’s a defined exit point can really be calming.

But meanwhile, give it your all! With well-thought-out process and outcome goals, you may never have to worry about your exit conditions. You’ll know early on if what you’re doing isn’t working, and you can take action to insure your success. With hard work, skill, and a little luck, you main worries will be plotting your multibillion dollar expansion …as you relax in your mansion’s new whirlpool bubble bath.

So take a deep breath. Calm your mind. And Go For It!

Living Your Life with Quality

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A story by Mark Albion of Making a Life, Making a Living.

An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house-building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He would miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by.

The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said "yes", but in time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end his career.

When the carpenter finished his work and the builder came to inspect the house, the contractor handed the front-door key to the carpenter. "This is your house," he said, "my gift to you." What a shock! What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently. Now he had to live in the home he had built none too well.

So it is with us. We build our lives in a distracted way, reacting rather than acting, willing to put up less than the best. At important points we do not give the job our best effort. Then with a shock, we look at the situation we have created and find that we are now living in the house we have built. If we had realized, we would have done it differently.

Think of yourself as the carpenter. Think about your house. Each day you hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Build wisely. It is the only life you will ever build. Even if you live it for only one day more, that day deserves to be lived graciously and with dignity.

The plaque on the wall says, "Life is a do-it-yourself project,"

Who would say it more clearly? Your life today is the result of your attitudes and choices in the past. Your life tomorrow will be the result of your attitudes and the choices you make today.

The Macho Test, by Shelle Rose Charvet

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by Shelle Rose Charvet

One of the most irritating aspects of day-to-day communication is trying to convince someone who takes a Macho attitude. Women are often dismayed to find that while amongst ourselves we can build on and critique each other’s ideas, it is sometimes much more difficult to do this when male colleagues are involved. And sometimes even women become Macho!

When a person is running a Macho Pattern, they operate as if they believe the following:

  • They already know everything there is to know.
  • They do not have any problems; they and everything connected with them are perfect.
  • If there are problems, they are of someone else’s making.
  • They are better, higher, more important, more knowledgeable than anyone else.

How many times have major decisions been made to assuage someone’s ego or to simply not lose face? Just listen to radio interviews. When the interviewer asks if someone were surprised by the turn of events, rarely if ever will the person admit to being surprised. That would be saying that they did not already know everything there is to know. Once I sold a training program with optional follow-up coaching. No one took up the coaching offer because that would have meant conceding they needed help. Now the coaching is just part of the training program.

All of us become Macho at times. Notice your reaction when one of your parents tells you what to do!

To make sure that even someone who has become Macho will consider your ideas, you could use the Macho Test as an editing technique. While I have formalized the Macho Test, you may have already done something like this yourself to make sure your important messages get through.

Write the document or prepare what you are going to say using the 4 step formula for presenting ideas to skeptical people. Then look it over and ask yourself the following questions about what you have prepared:

Is it anywhere stated or implied that:

1. There is something they don’t already know,
2. I am telling them what to do,
3. They have a problem and I have the solution,
4. They are not perfect in some way, and/or
5. I am better than they are in some way.

If any of the above are stated or implied, it does not pass the Macho Test! You may wish to rephrase as follows:

1. As you probably know….(then state the thing you suspect they do not know)

2. Use the language of suggestion: You may wish to consider.

3. I understand that other organizations have had this issue and what some of them have done is… How have you solved this problem? (implies they have already solved all the problems)

4. With your experience and knowledge in this area….

5. Your role is…. My role is… (establishing different yet equal roles)

Next time you get the sense that if you present a ‘new’ idea, the person will deny it’s actually new, try suggesting that it may be something they have already considered. You probably already know exactly who the Machos are in your life. I find that once I rephrase to pass the Macho Test, the people I’m addressing stop being Macho and become more willing to participate in the free flow of ideas.

I published an article entitled: "Ten Tips for Surviving the Health Care System." The title passes the Macho Test as "tips" are only suggestions. It would not have received nearly as much attention had I entitled it: "Ten Rules for Getting Through the Health Care System."

From my years helping people solve communication problems, I have learned that most of the effort is in getting someone into a mental and emotional state of openess, where they will be able to hear what I am saying. When we are successful at getting people to listen and take us seriously, it is because we have cleared enough mental space in the other person for our words to go in. Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourself!

Published in Profit Magazine on-line version: www.profitmag.com

Losses and Responsibility: How everyday business language lets us engage in accounting…deception.

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How everyday business language lets us engage in accounting…deception.

We’re living in interesting times. Worldcom announced $4 million in losses that had been buried as, um, capital expenditures (oops. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?). Enron’s collapses from horrendous mismanagement, taking Arthur Anderson down for obstruction of justice. Tyco apparently funneled billions of company dollars straight to the founder’s family. Global Crossing… Xerox… Merck … Everyone is so upset about the losses. We’re losing so much money. Losses, losses everywhere. But wait!

What does that mean? When I "lose" my wallet, it’s because it got accidentally (and thoughtlessly) misplaced. Getting into the cab, it was there. Six tequila shots later, when it was time to pay, the wallet was gone. Whoops. I must have lost it. Fortunately, the realization comes after the six shots, so the consequences (while probably severe) seem like little more than a hazy dream…

This article is continued in “It Takes a Lot More than Attitude … to Lead a Stellar Organization!" Click here to purchase.

What is Leverage? What the buzzwords mean and why not to use them.

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What the buzzwords mean, and why not to use them

“We will leverage our viral marketing efforts, resulting in widespread adoption of our revolutionary ‘no-revenue’ product, as customers recommend us to their friends.”
— Any of a million forgettable business plans

Leverage

Where you put in the same force but get much bigger result.

You leverage "X" to do "Y". You need a second verb in order for the construction to make sense.

You leverage small amounts of money to control a lot of money by borrowing with a small downpayment.

When you leverage X to do Y, Y must be something you could do without X. And having X must make Y a whole lot easier. If having X doesn’t make Y easier, it’s not leverage.

You leverage one person’s smarts by having them be a teacher.

You don’t leverage one person’s smarts by having them do their work.

You leverage your salesforce by having each of them get a dozen customers to become evangalists.

You don’t leverage your salesforce by having them go out and sell.

If you’re going to "leverage your technical expertise," that means you’ll use your technical expertise to produce a multiple of the results you could produce without that expertise, by automating, etc. Fedex has leveraged their package tracking system to lower costs, and increase offerings [web-based tracking, and now at-your-printer printing of airbills]

If "use" is a synonym for "leverage," you can probably safely use "use."

You don’t leverage your people unless you have a mechanism for turning 5 people’s knowledge into many more.

You leverage an expert by having them write a column. Not by hiring them to do work.

You don’t "leverage the power of the internet." You leverage the broad reach of the internet to aggregate customers from around the world. You leverage the speed of the internet to get product to your door faster than any other kind of ordering. You leverage the automation of the internet to … etc.

Click here to read about “viral marketing,” another hot buzzword.