Don't wait to be inspired to do "that" project

“Inspiration is for amateurs.  The rest of us just show up and get to work.” – Chuck Close

Sometimes I get inspired.  Sometimes I can bring inspiration on, or some inspiration, by reading or watching the right thing.  And sometimes I wake up inspired.

But I can’t count on any of it.  

I want to get great work (new work, creative work,) done often; and I can’t wait to be inspired to do so.

So, you just get to it, inspired or not.  That’s discipline.  

And once you find yourself getting into “the world of” doing that thing, without distraction, the faculties needed to do it will come alive.

Inspiration is great when it comes.  In the meantime – get to it!

Get your jollies for doing the right thing.

Doing the right thing can be hard if it is going to cost you money, or set you back, or if you have to take responsibility for what a team member did.

But if you come to understand the world will never be perfect, (you try to make it close!) and pre-determine to live by a code of values and standards, it makes it much easier. 

When you do the right thing, the angels are watching.  People notice.  They start to comment, and they start to trust you.  Because of that trust, things get easier.  People don’t have their guard up so much.  Your reputation gets around.  You get opportunities.  

Challenges still come along.  That’s life as a leader.  Difficult decisions still have to be made.  Especially since you are growing and pushing forward.  

Keep doing the right things.  Keep doing right by people.  

Because by doing right by people, you are doing right by you.

You are an appreciable asset

As I grow older, have tried more things, and have more experiences, I see things more clearly.

I also see things faster than it used to take me.  New things start rhyming with old things.  

One thing I understand is that my role as a leader makes all the difference.  I have competition – private equity companies.  They have a lot of money.  But one thing they don’t have is me.  In fact they don’t have anyone like me because when they buy a company the leader takes the money and leaves.  It’s only a matter of time until the bankruptcy of good intentions and spirit matches the performance of the business.  

If you can improve yourself to meet the demands of your business and leading others, you have something nobody can ever match or take away.  

You.

And in the end, being the best person you are capable of in service to others is what matters.

As long as you are breathing, you can still get better. 

Keep going.

Goals for 2024

I’m sure you have goals for 2024.  Right?  I mean you do, right?

Well, there are a few issues with you setting goals.

First, often goals are based on what we have done in the past – “and a little better”.  That could be ok, but it brings what and how you did in the past into it – and that could be limiting.

Next, you could be setting goals on your own.  Maybe you are tired.  Maybe your thinking is limited.  Maybe you don’t believe in things that are possible.  Maybe you aren’t seeing the potential in your business.  Maybe you are too close to it.  And dare I say, maybe you have problems and you don’t want to grow because you don’t want more problems.  Maybe you are afraid.

A leader can’t lead if they are left to themselves.  They have to get outside influences to stay fresh and open and be inspired by possibility.

A leader needs to invest a portion of their time being exposed to outside influences.  Read good books. Watch good videos with great and inspiring stories.  Talk to people who are on the move and unafraid.  Be open about your thinking and feelings to those who can help you think better.  Be vulnerable.  Be humble.  Be flexible.  Get out of your lane to explore.

If you don’t believe in things, you (and your organization) won’t try.

Who has influence?

“Leadership is influence”. -John Maxwell

Who would follow you and look to you for leadership even if you had no title?

Who has influence in your organization or part of it, even though they do not have a title?

They should be your next leaders.

Are you a transactional leader?

Are you allocating work all the time? – telling people what to do all the time, when and how to do it, and monitoring results?  Are you driving yourself insane trying to keep people busy and productive?

Are you a technician with 10 helpers instead of a leader of a ten-person team?

Or do you empower others to get results with your customers with training, giving them what they need to succeed, letting them participate in the how, and celebrating their successes?

Are you managing actions, or leading people to be their best in service to the group’s cause?

Mind your Plimsoll line

In the 1800’s and before, ships would too often sink because they were overloaded. If you are going to make a long journey and do that much work, you’d be more profitable by taking on more cargo – right?  But when a storm comes, you are overloaded, sink, and everything is lost.

Samuel Plimsoll came up with the idea of painting a line around the ship.  As ships were being loaded, when this line was down at the waterline, that was it, the ship could be loaded no further.  It’s called the Plimsoll line and ships around the world have one today.

The same is true for you.  You can only do so much.  When you are at your Plimsoll line you can take no more duties, tasks, issues, or problems.  If you do, you can “lose it” – isn’t that right?

Who’s “load” is it?  Yours, or your organization’s?  You are the leader of the organization, but everything doesn’t have to be on you.  You are not your company.  You are the leader of it, but it is not you.

Alternatively, you can lighten your load by offloading things to other people (ships).  Delegate, empower, or just say “No, I (we) are not doing that (right now)”.  The continual process of offloading yourself as the leader is HOW you scale.  This is a skill and an art. You have to get people to help you – more and more and more of them as you grow.  If you don’t, you can’t grow and will only drive yourself insane and ruin your life.

The ocean doesn’t care about your optimistic thinking.  When you are at your limit, you are at your limit.

Don’t get swamped.  Mind your Plimsoll line.

Shake the Snowglobe!

“(I aim to) Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” – Finley Peter Dunn, 1902

I hope Think Daily does that – afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted!

If you get comfortable – shake your snowglobe!  You don’t become your best self when you are comfortable.

If you are afflicted, (it’s your fault) maybe you need to stop shaking it for a while and catch up, heal up, rest up, get organized and finish what you started.

Do you need to shake the snow globe you are in, or stop shaking it?

Tell me with the orange comment button.  Let’s get a ton of comments today!

The power to create one's self

We should all create a life on purpose, instead of drifting along and reacting to circumstances.

Being an entrepreneur gives you the power to create yourself like no other path can.

It forces you to learn a lot.  It demands you be creative.  It urges you to develop your people skills.  It requires you to solve many many problems.  It piles responsibility on your shoulders to see what you will do with it.  It puts challenge after challenge in front to you to see if you will shrink, crack, or quit.

BUT…if you meet those challenges, you will grow and become better.  You will use more of your potential.  You will be in charge – the leader.  And if you learn to be a good one, you will get to lead a bigger organization.

Being an entrepreneur is a great challenge and has great rewards if you can do it.  The greatest of these rewards is being a person more able to make a positive difference.

Latest Podcast

Podcast are a thing these days.  I have done 6 or 8 of them as a guest.  The Forward Obsessed podcast is one that I love and I think it captures a lot of how I think these days.

One guy, Noah Kagan called and wanted to do an audio podcast.  We did it and he called back a few months later and said it was quite popular and he wanted to come back and do a video podcast.  I said yes.  The link to it is here.  I wasn’t going to send this out on Think Daily but it has over two million views in a few weeks so I figured I couldn’t hide it anyway.

Noah tailors his shows for people who want to see how other got rich.  There’s a lot of talk about how much money you make and how fast you made it.  I don’t like that – at least not as the lead attraction.  I know why he does it, because everyone is looking for a shortcut. 

Making money is a result of value creation.  The more value you create for people, or the more people you create value for, you can be rewarded for it in a free market.  To me, it’s immature to seek to make a lot of money without having a strong sense of your relationships, contributions to others, and being the best person you are capable of.  (Yes, I was once immature.  And yes, I am still maturing.) Money is an effect, not a cause.  

If you go into something just for the money, you are in it for the wrong reasons.  

This is the first time anyone has called me a billionaire, and I am not sure how I feel about that.  It’s a label.  I don’t want the first thing people to know about me is that I am a billionaire.  I am not a billionaire.  Not in my mind.  (I am the guy who is still doing the things to serve more people well.) If I was broke, I wouldn’t want to be introduced as “the broke guy”.  So why should I be introduced as “the billionaire”?  Should people treat a person different based on how much money he has or does not have?  I don’t think so.

Respect and admire someone for their contributions to others, yes, but not by their balance sheet.

Noah made a mistake and did not let me see the podcast before he published it.  I think that is wrong.  I would never do that again. By the time I saw it, it had 500,000 views.  And the title – “How I made 650 million a year…”?  I wish.  Sales are not profits.  He knows that, but he wants clicks.  Tsk, tsk, tsk.

We had three hours of content which they edited down.  To his credit, he left some important points in that shows that his questions were not the right ones for me.

I hope you can learn something.  Here it is –