Month: November 2016

I once interviewed with a manager
who complained
that her subordinates
didn’t take any initiative.
They did the bare minimum
and that was it.

The first day
I worked for her
I found out why.

One of my new co-workers
told me
this manager redid
anything they did.

She was right.
The manager redid all of my work.
I worked on
secret ‘extra’ projects
until I could transfer
out of her department.

Anita Campbell
shares

“…if you try to take over
or get involved with tasks
that you’ve entrusted
to members of your team,
it could have a negative impact
on employee initiative.

Team members might feel like
you don’t trust them enough
to do the work properly
—or they might just do
the bare minimum
because they assume
you’ll take over
the rest of the work anyway.”

Hire people you can trust.
Train them well.
And then allow them
to do their job.
There are other tasks
you should be doing.

Before I try anything
dramatically different,
I always ask myself
‘What is the worst case scenario?
How terrible can my situation get?’

Having grown up dirt poor
and often hungry,
I know I can survive almost anything.
And usually the possible rewards
of taking the action
are well worth the risk.

In Re:New 2016,
Vinay Chopra,
Founder of Mobiroo,
shares

“I was always exposed
to trying new things,
and if you fail:
get back up.

My motto’s always been,
‘What’s the worst
that could happen?’

Granted, when you do hit the worst,
it’s a horrible feeling.

But I just always believed
if I put enough work
and passion into things,
something would come up.”

What’s the worst
that could happen?
Could you survive that worst?

Brewer
D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc.
has come under fire recently
for endorsing one of the Presidential Candidates.

Here’s the issue
I have with this…
A company isn’t a person.
A company can’t vote.
A company doesn’t have an opinion.

Companies consist of people,
sometimes one person
(in the case of my business),
often many people.

All of the employees of
D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc
didn’t endorse this candidate.
One person, their owner, did.

But instead of speaking as a person,
he decided he’d speak for EVERYONE
who worked, works, will work for the company,
past, present and future.

That’s someone with big balls.

As business builders,
we speak on behalf of ourselves,
as individuals,
and on behalf of our companies.

Make a conscious decision
as to whom you’re speaking on behalf of
and make that clear to listeners.

Many people have been critical
about Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits.
These people are clearly
NOT businesswomen.

When I started in business,
I wore cute little skirt suits.
I loved them.

Then I landed
a great female mentor.
The first thing she said to me?
“Love the skirt.
Never wear it again.”

I listened to her
and never wore them again.

Wearing a skirt
limits the things we can do.
We won’t be asked
to crawl under a machine
on the manufacturing floor.
We won’t be asked
to get into a service truck.
We won’t be asked
to climb a ladder
or stand at the front of a stage.
We certainly won’t be asked
to go into any situation
where everyone else is wearing pants.

It is unlikely that anyone
will tell us
this is why we weren’t chosen.
We simply won’t be chosen.

This isn’t merely about sexism
(though that IS a factor).
It is also about being practical.
If skirts were practical,
men would wear them.
Skirts are limiting
(unless you are fine
with everyone seeing your underwear).

Embrace the pantsuit.

A client k reader
wrote me,
asking me
how she could convince
someone to build a business
when he feels
it will fail
and
his efforts will be wasted.

Unless I absolutely need his help
to reach my own goals,
I don’t attempt to convince anyone
to try,
to write the book
he’s been talking about,
to build that business
he’s been dreaming about,
when he doesn’t truly want
that dream to be a reality.

That sounds cold
but I see it as a kindness.

Building a business
or writing a book
or taking on just about any other project
and making it a success
is damn difficult.
There will be a million things
that go wrong
and a million reasons to quit.

The folks unwilling to try
tend to seize one of these reasons
and use it as a reason to stop.
They’ll blame me for encouraging them.
I’ll have wasted my time
helping them.
We’d all be happier
if they didn’t even start their projects.

Instead, I concentrate
on helping the many people
who are willing to try
but need encouragement.

We can’t force people
to follow their dreams.
But we can
make that first step easy
and support them
when they take it.

Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo,
National Novel Writing Month.
The goal of NaNoWriMo
is to write
a 50,000 word novel
in 30 days.

It is a great experience,
a way for building a writing business
to be less solitary,
less lonely.

The sad thing is
many would-be writers
won’t participate.
Why?
Because they feel
they can’t ‘win’,
they can’t write 50,000 words
in one month.

So they don’t even try.

I have never won NaNoWriMo.
I won’t win this year either.
(I have a 60,000 word novel to write
and I’ve already written 12,500 words.)

Those 50,000 words aren’t the true goal.
The true goal is to push ourselves to write more.

Right now,
you likely have people telling you
your business won’t be successful.

An aside: This won’t ever stop.
I have people telling me that
about my writing business
and I’ve hit the USA Today Bestseller list
TWICE.

These people will try to convince you
not to bother building businesses,
not to ‘waste’ your time by trying.

Don’t listen to them.
People are building successful businesses
every day.
You can do this.