Earn Permission to Lead People

A leader can look to dominate others or take the power to manipulate them because of their position, OR a leader can earn the permission from their team to lead them.

Earning permission is about genuinely caring for the team members and their success.  When you care they will know it.  

It’s about being competent in your knowledge and skills.  They will know it.

It’s about being firm in your principles and kind in how you communicate.

It’s about asking and listening, and treating your team with respect.

It’s about taking the blame and giving away the credit.

If you do these things, they will allow you to lead them.

Let’s face it. It’s easier to lead people when they aren’t despising you and fighting your influence.

Earn permission to lead.

Top line means nothing if you can't get paid.

I know businesses where you can get business, but because you can’t get paid on time you can’t build a good business, and sometimes you can’t survive at all.

Who doesn’t pay on time?  There are exceptions but in my experience – the government, insurance companies, and sometimes general contractors of large projects.  When a GC finally pays you, many keep 10% or more of your money as “retainage” for a year.  And they make you jump through hoops to get paid, using anything as an excuse not to pay you.

I know doctors hate Medicare and Medicaid because they don’t get paid and when they do it is a fraction of the amount.

And to make it worse, these parties don’t care.  If you go out of business waiting to be paid, it doesn’t bother them one bit.  I don’t do business like this.

So, as for me, I will never build a business that depends on these parties paying me.  They can keep it.  I will not be their tool.  This is my advice for myself.

(Again, there are exceptions.)

You can't make a good deal with a bad guy.

You can’t make a good deal with a bad guy.

There are no exceptions.

Really know who you are partnering with/hiring/or entering into a contract with. Take the time to find out.

Discount this advice at your peril.

Weak or average people dilute great teams

Say you have a team.  There are 9 great people and one not-so-great one.

How much would you think the not-so-great one is dragging down the overall performance and morale of the team?

More than 10% I can tell you that.  It’s a lot more than you think.

Weak or bad team players bring down the performance, motivation, standards, and engagement of the entire team in an outsized proportion to their numbers.

Who are your weakest players?  Would you hire them again?  Then why do you keep them?

Addition by subtraction….

Wouldn’t it be great if they worked for your competitors?

How strong is your "brand"?

Brand – the emotional connection between your organization and your client.

What would your clients say about your brand? 

Ask them.

What happened in the past for them to say that about your brand?

What has to happen now for them to love you (even more)?

Big goals energize you!

Little goals elicit just a little energy, creativity, and excitement.

Big goals taken seriously bring out the best in you and your team.

Go bigger.  Play bigger.  Live bigger – and tap into what is in you!

Relentless in Pursuit

Would your goals say you are relentless in pursuit of them?

Would your competitors say you just keep coming and never quit?

If I had a choice to be the smartest or relentless, I’ll take relentless.

Decide on the right goal for you right now. 

Make a plan (which will change as you act on it and get more information.) 

Take action – and be doggedly persistent in pursuit. 

The Dangers of Price Controls

Some years ago I talked to this guy from Venezuela at an Atlas Network conference. He owned appliance stores there.  The country is ruled by a strongman who has no idea how to run a country.  He has run it into the ground, caused shortages of everything (empty store shelves) and hyperinflation.  There is starvation (literally the weight of the average Venezuelan is something like 20 pounds lower), and millions trying to escape the country.

At the time I talked to this guy, the leader of the country was struggling with hyperinflation because they just kept printing money.  He was being criticized for the inflation and didn’t like that one bit.  To solve this problem he thought that he would implement price controls.  That is to tell businesses how much they could charge.  

One day men from the government, backed by men with guns came into his store.  They literally took a sharpie marker and drew a line through his price tags on the appliances and cut the prices in half.  This they felt would solve the problem of inflation.

Of course the store owner went out of business and fled the country.  There were no more appliances to be found; or groceries; or fuel; or much of anything.  The economy was destroyed and their money became near worthless. Nobody would try to run a business when they could not set their prices according to their cost, and make a profit.

If someone told me I had to cut my prices by 15% to control inflation, I would close my doors and 2200 people would be out of a job.  I can’t do that, and I will not work for free.  Even if I did stay in business, no employee would get a raise or bonus, I could not keep up or invest in my facilities and have nice places for my employees to work, and I would make no more investments in innovation, real estate, or new business.  All corporate and personal discretionary spending would cease.  And everyone else would do the same thing.  The economy would enter a depression.  Everyone would suffer.

Today there is talk of price controls by people in our government.  They will tell corporations how much they can charge and stop “price gouging”.  This of course is to deflect the blame for inflation from the government who caused it by excessive government spending and printing way too much money, to the producers and suppliers.  It is grossly ignorant to say such a thing will solve the inflation problem.  It has been tried before, even in the United States in the 1970’s – and never worked.

The following is from the Imprimus newsletter from Hillsdale College, written by Harry Hazlitt & Brian Westbury – 

“Proposals to address this monetary inflation with price fixing, if carried out, will lead to shortages and a profit squeeze and will tend to distort and reduce production. 

Sometimes people talk as if it would be possible to have universal price fixing.  That is to say, the government would fix every wage, every price, and every cost.  This is absolutely impossible.  While nobody knows how many separate prices and wages there are, there are good reasons for thinking that there cannot be fewer than about ten million.  If you try to fix ten million prices, what you are trying to fix is something on the order of 50 trillion cross-relationships of prices.  This is something that no government is capable of determining – or policing.  

If the government could police it, the government would have to impose rationing and allocation of individual goods in order to keep prices where they were if it kept increasing the money supply.  And even then, the whole project would be impossible for the simple reason that the government cannot control the price of imports.  And it would not know how to pass these increases in import pricing through the economy without creating disruptions and distortions.”

Until our government can reduce spending and stop increasing the money supply, inflation will continue.  I am saddened that we as citizens support fiscal discipline and balanced budgets until we hear that it is our project or benefits that is cut.  During election time one candidate will tell the public “my opponent cut_________ for (working families, seniors, the military, our state, children, housing, the environment, this cause or that, etc. etc.).  Then we vote for the big spender because they will “save us” (by borrowing and printing more money).  We all want to keep the party going and we are ignoring the smoke coming out of the back room.

Unfortunately, candidates that speak the truth (and there aren’t many) don’t get elected because we don’t want to hear it or fix it.

Thomas Jefferson said something to the effect that democracy is great until elected officials figure out they can buy people’s votes with their own money.  Then – the end is near.

We need to be smarter than that and see the big picture, and not screw up the American experiment for future generations.

What causes inflation?

Inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply.  Who causes that?  The government.

At the end of 2019 demand bank deposits and currency in the hands of the public totaled $15.3 trillion.  Today that figure is $21.1 trillion.  

The federal government just cannot control themselves.  They spend nearly $2 trillion more each year than they take in.  Legislators want to be the good guys and girls by overspending but don’t want to give us the bad news and raise taxes by a lot.  (That would discourage investment and production and make things worse.) So they borrow and print the money instead.

This is irresponsible.

Printing trillions of dollars in cash does not create new value.  It reduces the value of the money that is already out there.  There is more money chasing the same goods.  That’s inflation.

Don't waste inspiration

When you are inspired to do something great, or something you know you should do but have been putting off – get off your butt and take action before the feeling leaves you or you talk yourself out of it.

(Do NOT apply this advice when you are angry or want to do something negative that you will regret.)

Inspiration is not there all the time.  It comes to you for a reason.

Don’t waste it.