Sign Your Name To Each Day

At the end of every day are you willing to sign your name, knowing that you gave all you could to that day? I am talking about whether you are willing to take ownership of how you conducted your life and business. “Will I sign my name to the end of this day?” is a question I’ve been asking myself for a few years now. Believe me, there are times when I feel great about signing my name and days when I don’t even want to look at the pen. Usually those are the days where nothing has gone right or every step I took forward was met with a new challenge.

There is grace in this question I ask myself. You’ll notice that I don’t ask, “Were you perfect today?” “Did you knock it out of the park with every sales call, interview, or interaction with a client or team member?” Rather, the question asks did you give all that you could? And, at the heart of that question is, “Were you true to your purpose and vision, were you true to you heart?”

There are so many important and unimportant things that can fill our day. We are called to meetings, we have to answer emails, tend to client needs, and handle interruptions. The list goes on and on. With a world constantly vying for our attention and giving us an infinite number of choices on how to fill our day, it can be difficult to look back after a long crazy day and see any semblance of purposeful execution that you want to sign your name to.

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Are You Willing to Improve Yourself?

This past week I was impacted by a great quote and a challenging leadership question. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about either of them all week. Both of them will stay with me forever and have become a part of my growth as a leader.

The quote came from an audio teaching by author and CEO John Maxwell. He was discussing the books that have marked his life and sharing his insights from these books. He shared a quote from one of his favorite books, As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen.

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound.”

This quote hit me right in the gut and immediately brought to mind how many times I am guilty of this type of thinking. I want my income to increase, sales to be up, marriage to improve, relationships to be stronger, but am I willing to first work on improving myself? Am I willing to look at my own faults and where I need improvement so that I can contribute more to the situation and not take away.

This quote reminded me I need to take an inventory of what I am doing to improve myself and bring more value and purpose to the people I love, lead and serve.

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13 Questions and Goodbye

Over the past year I’ve been recording successes and failures, prayer requests and answered prayers, and challenges and blessings in the hope that I will be able to see the bigger picture of what is going on personally and professionally in my life. I’ve decided that this will be my last blog post of the year and that I will be taking a sabbatical from all social networking and media. My goal during my sabbatical is to spend time reflecting, meditating, reading, praying, and listening. I will be with my wife, children, friends, and family deepening relationships and making wonderful memories.

The 13 questions I’ve listed below will be my homework for the remainder of the year. On January first I will begin to put into action a plan to ensure that in the near future I am able to answer “Yes” to all of these questions and the team that I lead can answer “Yes” as well.

I will return to blogging and the social media world the first week in January. Until then, I encourage you to answer these questions, spend time reflecting on 2009, and prepare to engage in 2010. I challenge you to take the steps necessary, so in 12 months you can answer “Yes” to ALL the questions below.

1. Do you belong to a team of professionals that encourage, support, and challenge each other to be better?
2. Does your manager or leader articulate the vision of your team during these challenging times?
3. Do you trust your coworkers to help you with your business while you are on vacation?
4. Are you working in a culture where there is recognition and celebration of success?
5. Does your leader provide you with a personal and business development coaching program?
6. Are you working from a written business plan that identifies your high-payoff activities and improvement projects for the coming year?
7. Does your company/leader provide you with consistent relevant training?
8. Does your company/leader provide you with tools to help you be successful and different than the competition?
9. Do you trust that your manager/leader is looking out for you and sincerely wants you to be successful?
10. Do your coworkers and your leader consistently live out the convictions and values of your organization?
11. Do you have the desire to be engaged with your coworkers and contribute to the overall success of the company?
12. Are you receiving value that is equal to or greater than what it costs to be at your current company?
13. Are you willing to do what it takes so you can answer “Yes.” to all of the questions listed above?

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

Coach Dan

Facing Your Reality

Last week I talked with a friend about three different realities facing leaders and sales professionals as we approach the end of another year. This year has been difficult and challenging for everyone. Having clarity around the reality of your situation is required as you plan for this next year. Most of us do not have trouble dreaming or hoping for better results, but if we do this without acknowledging the reality of our situation and planning appropriately, our dreams will turn into nightmares. Here are three realities facing professionals today:

• The Need for a Turn-Around: The past year you have seen your business shrink considerably. You’ve kept your head barely above water, had to cut personal and professional costs drastically, and if you don’t turn this ship around it will be the end of your career in this field. It’s time to look at what made you successful originally, think outside the box for new strategies, and recommit to your vision.

• Sustain and Build on Success: The past year has been challenging, but you have risen to the occasion and survived the storm. Your success has helped you stay positive. You are working twice and hard and earning half the money but deals are closing and revenue is being generated. You need to keep this success cycle moving forward, adapt where needed, and work hard. Focus on honing your skills, bringing value to clients, and don’t stray from what you do best!

• Time to Reset and Start-Up: The past year has been brutal. You have one foot out of the door and may even have a part-time job lined up to bring in revenue. You are faced with daunting questions, “Is this really worth my time and efforts? Can I be successful?” If you answer, “Yes”, it will mean lots of hard work, getting out of your comfort zone, facing your fears, and starting from scratch. You will be required to re-build relationships, re-establish your vision, write a new business plan, and work longer and harder than ever before.

Which of these realities are you facing right now?

Each of these realities will require commitment, determination, perseverance and a belief that you can be successful. Don’t spend time dreaming of future success without acknowledging the reality of your current situation. Once you have clarity around your reality, let me know how I can help. If you would like to work on developing a plan and strategy to address this reality, we can schedule some time together one-on-one.

Make it a great day!

Coach Dan

Five Roadblocks To Achieving Success

I love sales and leadership conventions, reading books on success, and listening to motivational speakers. There is a thrill that comes from being around other professionals; listening to what they are doing right, what they need to improve on, and learning about the steps we must take to reach next year’s goals.

What I love more though, is the thrill of taking action and actually achieving results. So often, we get pumped up from one-time experiences and we develop wonderful plans to change the world but then we go home and reality hits us hard. We lose our enthusiasm little by little. We get back into the routine of doing things the way we’ve always done them, and we eventually find ourselves achieving the same results we’ve been achieving. We wake up six months later wondering what went wrong and asking ourselves why we lost the enthusiasm that we thought for sure would guarantee us success this time around.

I’ve identified five roadblocks to achieving success:

1. We fail to create action plans. Whether it’s a book or motivational speech, we fail to spend 20-30 minutes writing down the key takeaways and actions steps necessary to implement what we have just learned. We let the tyranny of the urgent steal our focus and attention, and within a short amount of time we’ve forgotten what we just learned and we fail to act. When your intent is at its peak, take action and implement.
2. We fear change. Going to the next level will require you to make changes personally and professionally. These changes might be in the way we think or act and may require us to become more disciplined in certain areas of our life. Sometimes these changes force us to make tough decisions that impact other people’s lives. Fearing this type of change will get you nowhere.
3. We don’t know our “Big Why”. Achieving maximum success requires you to know your purpose for what you do each day. It has to go beyond the motivational speeches and the desire for more income and status. Without purpose, we find ourselves unmotivated to take action and do the things we know we need to do to be successful. This can be especially damaging in challenging times. If you don’t know your “Big Why” you’ll never achieve “Big Success”.
4. We lack true accountability. My coach, Barry Engelman, has shared with me time again the best way to avoid accountability is to be vague. Lots of people say they want to be held accountable but few really do. We set goals like “I’m going to start working out” or “I’m going to start calling more past clients”, but we never get specific with the details of these goals. By doing so we can never be held accountable to actions, timelines, and benchmarks. A goal that you can be held accountable to might sound like this, “I’m going to do a cardio workout 30 minutes a day, three days a week, for the next 120 days.” See the difference?
5. We fail to do what we are supposed to do – We fail to act. In the end it’s about taking action and doing what we know to be the right thing to do. Sometimes this requires a leap of faith, sometimes we have to face our fears, and sometimes we need to stop doing the “busy work” that takes us away from true success. It may push you out of your comfort zone, but it must be done. This is not a new problem. The Apostle Paul wrote about this almost 2,000 years ago.

“…For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” – Romans 7:18-19

Now, I’m not saying when we don’t implement our strategies and plans we are evil. What I am saying is that this is a true roadblock to success and one that men and women have struggled with for thousands of years. You are not alone. The best solution is to take action.

As you consider these five roadblocks to achieving success, evaluate the areas you are struggling with the most and start making changes. There is a great scene in the movie Braveheart where Mel Gibson’s character Williams Wallace has just made an amazing motivational speech to Scottish warriors about to take on the English Army. As he finishes the speech one of his friends and followers turns to him and says, “Nice speech, now what do we do?” This is the question I encourage you to ask yourself after every motivational experience you have. Answering that question and taking action will lead you to greater success.

Make it a great day!

Coach Dan