My baseball is in the creek....surrounded by leeches.

When I was 7 all the boys in the neighbourhood would come to play baseball in my yard. 

When I was 7 we didn't have the best yard for baseball. We had the tallest fences. 

When I was 7 we lived next to a creek full of leeches.

Homerun!

So we would play ball. 

At least once a game someone would hit a homerun...

over the fence...

...down the hillside...

...and right into the creek. 

There was only one thing to do: go get the ball.

The Leeches

Funny thing about being a kid, the leeches didn't really bother us. 25 years later I recoil at the thought of them. 

But back then picking them off was just part of life as we knew it. 

Eventually it became a game to see who could come back with the most - or biggest - suckers stuck to their legs. 

The leeches weren't important, as long as we got our ball back.

So what?

Problems come from anywhere, even success.

As kids we loved celebrating the homerun. 

And yet we all knew as soon as we crossed the plate, arms raised in triumph, it was time to go back in the creek. 

One of us would grab the salt and the pail, and we would all wade in up to our knees until we got our ball back. 

That was our cost of success.

You can't ignore your problems. 

Well, you can but....  

Nobody wanted to go back into the creek. 

But the alternate was unthinkable: the game would be over. The ball would be washed away. 

How many times in life do we want to pretend that everything is okay? And in the end we just have to forfeit the game prematurely because our ball got washed away.

Problems in the rear-view mirror are smaller than they appeared in the windshield.

Nobody really wanted leeches on their legs, but no matter how gross the leeches always came off. 

Nobody got hurt. 

We got our ball back. 

In minutes our feet were dry again. 

And the game went on.


I remember the leeches being way bigger in my mind than they were on my legs. So it is with all problems: they scale faster in our heads than they do in real life.

Don't let them grow. Just start. 

Problems build teams...if you let them

We may have been on opposite teams in the backyard, but the idea of our ball being washed away unified us. 

We strategized the best our little 7-year old minds could. 

And on those times the ball disappeared into the storm culvert under the road, we all went in together. We all came out together. 

With the ball.

What problems are looming for you?
What ball do you need to get back?

Go get it. Simple as that.

Start by starting.

Nothing is a Substitute for Hard Work. Nothing.

"I will never work as hard as you do."

That was me 25 years ago.

Talking to my father. 

My successful father.

He shook his head and sighed knowingly.

Amazing how time provides perspective.

It's not about Working Harder....

There is a lot written these days about how we don't need to work harder. Instead we need to......

...work smarter

...work faster

...work independently

...work collaboratively

...network more 

...listen more

...walk more

...dream more

...nap more
...cultivate our social media channels

...ignore the social media time-sucks....

But whatever the opinion of the moment, the general consensus is that working harder is not the solution.

It is TOTALLY about Working Harder!

You want the truth?

They are right when they say working harder is not the solution. What they should be saying is working harder is the gatekeeper to the solution. 

Put another way, if all the current opinions on how to work smarter are accelerators in the race to success, then hard work is the registrar to the race. 

And nobody gets to run if they don't sign up.

A Story

Years ago my wife and I bought the family business. It was a good business in a market with slim margins and tough competition. We made money by being honest, tough, fair and shrewd. 

And by working hard.

And then came 2007

We were invited to bid on a large contract outside of our niche. It came at a time when we needed work. But it came with some....wrinkles. 

Although riskier than we liked, the opportunity lined up with our long-term strategy. 

We went through our decision-making process with more rigor than usual. And when I was satisfied we had assessed all the risks I signed off on it.

My kingdom for a do-over. 

The project went straight into the tank. I had made one wrong decision and almost bankrupted the company in the process.

The next twelve months were spent working day and night trying to keep the ship afloat. 

Overhead was slashed.

I paid myself a fraction of what my employees took home. Every spare dollar went back into the business. 

Sometimes there is no Substitute

The year was a blur.

Many nights I slept in the boardroom on a row of chairs. I sacrificed everything: family, friends, sleep, health....

It was the only way to survive. But we did....just barely.

Hard Work is Inevitable

On the path to success hard work is inevitable. 

Hard work is necessary. 

Hard work is good. 

Hard work is what makes success taste so sweet. 

Let's face it: for every Tim Ferris working a 4-hour week, there are millions of people grinding their asses off to fight their way to success. Your chances of succeeding without working hard are smaller than winning the lottery.

"I will never work as hard as you do."

I recently reminded my dad about what I had said 25 years ago. He looked at me and laughed. Then he said this:

"How'd that work for you? You ended up working a lot harder than I ever did." 

And he gave me a hug. 

Luck favors the prepared, darling.

Sign up for the race.

Run.

With a bit of strategy, and a little luck, you will find your finish line.

But you gotta sign up.

Faith and Fear

I was standing in line at the butcher this morning, waiting to pick up our Christmas turkey, when I overheard this:

Wife: So Helen is thinking about going to Spain in the new year. She wants to see historic Europe. The only thing holding her back is that she is afraid of being converted.

Husband: What?!

Wife: In her words "I fear for the eternal condition of my soul."

Husband: What?!?!

Wife: She is afraid she is going to be converted from her faith. She told me "Maybe if I don't go into any churches or talk to any priests then I can't be converted." Apparently she thinks you can catch religion like a virus.

I concealed a laugh behind a cough.

But the more I thought about this story the sadder it made me. Poor Helen is shackled by a tragic condition: she believes in her convictions, but she is not convicted by her beliefs. She knows where her faith lies, but she doesn't know whether her faith can stand. Helen is prepared to skip one of the most beautiful countries in the world out of fear that a man-of-faith might play three-card-Monty with her beliefs.

I wonder how many of us struggle with this very fear condition: whether in the leaders we follow, the organizations we join, the teams we lead, or the life choices we make. Is our faith, belief, fortitude strong enough to carry us through the inevitable valleys? Or do our emotional knees buckle under load, leaving us lying face-down in the muck of life?

I love working with new entrepreneurs as they start their journey into the world of business ownership. One of the most wonderful attributes of all new entrepreneurs is their self-confidence, that innate self-belief telling them while 90% of new businesses fail they will be in the majestically successful 10%. And they must believe, for without that abiding faith in themselves as the exception to the rule there would be no entrepreneurs at all.

And so it is with this courage and strength and fortitude they take that bold first step.

It doesn't take long - it never does - before the unwavering self-confidence starts to flag. The first month revenues come in at half of the most conservative projection, the expenses come in at twice. Their contractor suddenly finds asbestos (or a cracked boiler, or structural damage) and the renovation costs end up grossly overrunning the budget. And their printer just misspelled the street name on all of their marketing materials, sending all potential traffic to the other side of town.

Right about here is where the questions start: do I believe in what I'm doing? Is my belief in this vision enough to see me through? Do I believe in this more than I'm afraid of failing?

Fear sets in.

Please understand, this is a reasonable fear. This is a healthy fear. If properly understood and channelled this can even be a motivating fear. But if left unchecked it can become a paralyzing fear, preventing you from seeing the beautiful sights of Spain. The choice is yours. The question is how will you respond to this fear?

Fear and doubt are not optional. It is the ability to fully see and accept them, and then manage them, that affects the outcome.

Unbridled optimism to the exclusion of pragmatic fear leads to disillusionment.

Unchecked fear to the exclusion of courageous optimism leads to paralysis.

Understand your faith, understand your fears.

Leverage both emotions to maximize your chances for success.

Helen will never know how strong and abiding her faith may be unless, and until, she is willing to test it.

It's ok to be afraid. It's not ok to be too afraid.

To make your business more profitable find a mentor

Every entrepreneur I have ever met has a shared goal: to be more profitable. 

Being an entrepreneur is difficult. 

You work 80 hours a week to try and get an edge.

You wake up in the middle of the night worrying about next week's production run.

...or tomorrow's delivery schedule.

......or this week's payroll.

And if not any of those then you wake up worrying that you must be forgetting something.....

Being an entrepreneur means you are

 supposed to have all the answers.

You're it. 

Being an entrepreneur means you have to be good at your thing, the thing that made you want to go into business in the first place.

AND you have to be good at the "art of business".

The Art of Business

So many people find focusing on the business side to be soul-sucking! Any of these sound familiar to you:

• it's not what I love to do
• it feels unnatural
• it's not what I'm good at 
• it feels like work
• if I'm not focusing on my product my business will suffer

I shared a meal... 

...with a professional whose mind and spirit I admire. The conversation flowed through dinner until he suddenly turned to me after the dessert course and asked 

"What do you do? I mean, I know what you do for a living but what is it you do??"

I was a bit taken aback, but responded by describing my role as a business mentor and leadership coach. 

Why a mentor?

I explained how I work with entrepreneurs to help: 

• expose existing blind spots
• develop strategies 
• devise tactical plans

Discretionary purchase?

Without hesitation my professional friend responded that I must only be busy during economic booms, since my work was an extreme example of a "discretionary purchase". 

He rolled his eyes, got up, and walked away.

I sighed and shook my head. And laughed.

A good mentor has an ROI 

Here's the thing:

A good mentor should save an entrepreneur far more than he costs. 

A great mentor should raise an entrepreneur's level of profitability significantly faster than the entrepreneur could ever do alone. 

What makes a mentor? 

A mentor is a mentor by virtue of two factors: 

1. he has already paid the Stupid Tax himself, 
2. he is willing & able to save others from doing the same.

The Stupid Tax

The Stupid Tax is very simply the time, energy, effort, and money we expend because:

we just didn't know any better! 

It is the real cost of mistakes that we never would have made if we only knew then what we know now.

I have paid the Stupid Tax many, many times myself. And to this day the lessons I learned best are the ones that cost me the most.

The ONE GOOD THING about the Stupid Tax

The Stupid Tax has one redeeming quality: you get to keep the receipts!

And THIS is one of the core reasons to find a mentor: you get to read their receipts. Suddenly the cost of the mentor is pennies against dollars. 

Not so much of a discretionary purchase anymore....

Getting back to my friend

I sighed because my friend drew his conclusions about me, and others like me, without asking a single question.

I shook my head because it was evident that he had never thought about the amount of Stupid Tax he pays. 

I laughed because the receipts in my pocket would have been very helpful to him. 

Ignore at your own Risk

That's the thing about Stupid Tax receipts: a person can only read them at their own discretion.