It’s easy to forget that we have a world view in our mind that’s so pervasive that we don’t even recognize it. It’s so prevalent that the only time we really notice it is when someone rubs up against it with their own [flawed] version of it and we get annoyed. But the fact is that our beliefs are powerful. For good or ill, they are running us.

So let me challenge you to stop and choose some beliefs instead of being bullied by the ones that snuck in over time. Don’t go just for the easy ones though, go for quality. Deep down, what do you really believe. I’ve been pondering this one for a bit and here are four things that I choose to believe.

1. You make more money being yourself, not someone else.
2. Great relationships don’t just happen, they’re consciously and intentionally built.
3. Relationships have a compounding effect (not always in your favour).
4. Emotion > Logic

These four beliefs are ones that I’ve chosen to get very deliberate about this year. They may not be earth-shattering and I don’t know exactly where it’ll go, but I believe it’ll be to everyone’s advantage. How about you? What are you going to believe?

Have a great year,
Chris

My friend and colleague, Kim, and I were emailing back and forth about time today, and so I thought I’d share where we landed.

There are three things we can do instead of “time management”. First of all, we can manage our focus. While you can’t shove time around, there’s a way that we can move our focus to what’s important to us. We can also narrow our focus so that it’s zeroed in on what matters most.

Secondly, we can manage our state. While it can be a bit dicey to take full blown control over our emotions, it is possible to set ourselves up for success and get our mental state shifted to one that’s clear, positive, energized and takes on the “can do” flavour. When that happens, our use of time becomes much more productive.

Finally, we can manage our behaviour/activity. Regardless of what you’re up to, at some point you’re going to have to “do” something. Be specific about the activity and then go hard at it.

So that’s what we can manage instead of time. But there’s also one more perspective that’s worth knowing about time.

Some people operate “through time,” which means they see time as a time line that they are on and they need to keep moving along that line. People like that often get stressed about being late, planning their calendar is a big deal and they tend to be very organized and a bit more rigid about time and schedule related issues. I would be an example of someone who is “through time.”

The other way people work with time is more like a location – it’s a place they “are.” This is called “in time”. They see time as a space within which they are operating. They are very present, will allow a conversation to go on as long as it needs to and it can be very powerful.

Being “time deliberate” would be knowing which of the two you tend to do, knowing which approach is the most appropriate for the kind of task/conversation that’s happening, and then choosing your focus, your state and you behaviour accordingly.

Manage yourself, not your time.
Chris Venn

I was reading sometime ago about John Patterson. John was the President of The National Cash Register Company at the beginning of the 1900′s. John is cool. He’s smart. He’s disciplined. And above all, he’s a great salesman.

A lot of the current world of marketing and sales has emanated from his leadership and the sales training he provided to the men (yep, it was only men in those days) who joined his team. The National Cash Register Company (later to become NCR) was an innovator. The firm had created the cash register. It’s a bit hard to think about life without a cash register – even current-day point of sale systems have a cash register attached (except of course in the magical world of Apple stores where I always feel like I just left without paying – digressing).

NCR had a great opportunity and a big problem. Their opportunity was that they had a cash register. It was smart, it was secure and it was fast. The problem was that no one wanted one. People knew how to do simple math and didn’t see the need for this expensive contraption that would just take away counter space.

Patterson had a problem. Luckily, Patterson had a simple, elegant solution. He decided he wouldn’t sell the cash register – he’d let his clients buy them. He had a different sale to make.

Patterson decided to sell a genius concept. The genius was that he went around America selling consumers on the need for a receipt. As a matter of fact, he created demand for a receipt. The result? Shop owners needed a cash register and they sought him out to buy them.

It really was genius. If people wanted evidence of their purchase, they needed a receipt. If someone wanted to return an item, they should have a receipt. If a shop owner wanted to prove their math was right, they should have a receipt. Something that we take for granted today was invented to create a demand by solving a real problem.

People often say that entrepreneurs are great problem solvers. My experience is that we’re not; we’re generally average problem solvers and it annoys us to solve problems. What I have noticed is that most of us became entrepreneurs because we like creating things – ideas, plans, projects, etc. We’re inventors.

Sometimes it’s worth it to pause from trying to sell and consider what “need” could be created so that people start to buy from you rather than you having to sell everyone.

Chris Venn

Over and over there are questions like these that are posed and answered. Interestingly, the answers have a great deal of range and tend to simply echo someone’s experience or bias – and that makes sense to me. I get it. I just don’t think that it always leads to accuracy.

In a recent conversation with a client, we talked about this very issue: how close/similar do I need to be with my niche market? It’s a great question, and I think there’s a relevant answer for it. You see, the issue isn’t about being the same. If it were, we’d all be in trouble.

For example, if you are a successful advisor and aiming to work with some very affluent families, there might be no reasonable opportunity for you to be the “same.” Their wealth, their neighbourhood, their education, their peer group, and their lifestyle may simply be unreachable. But that doesn’t mean you can’t build a relationship and provide great financial insight and guidance.

The real issue is whether or not you can enter the same “Sphere of Sameness” as your client. Sameness is an area, not a point – so, you can be in the area without having to be identical to them.

You can be in the “Sphere of Sameness” with a potential client in all kinds of different ways. It may be success, or fashion, or values, or neighbourhood, or education, or vocabulary, or relationships, or interests, or reading lists or any number of other things. It’s not the net worth that has to be the connector, as long as there is some area where you can show a relevant and meaningful overlap or similarity.

The sub-conscious is constantly looking for people to whom it can say, “you’re just like me!” Sameness is powerful and influential because we have a factory-installed desire to connect. Often times, it’s actually more powerful to be similar than to be identical. As an identical twin, I understand this one well – exactness isn’t everything it’s cut out to be.

When you are looking to connect and build relationships that matter, know that you don’t need to dress like your client, drive the same car or roll with the same crowd. Look for areas where you can enter the Sphere of Sameness with your potential client, and then build from there.

Chris

No, I’m not going to try and be clever and say “we should go the third mile.” There’s a nuance that’s much more important than just driving ourselves into the ground with more and more effort.

The nuance is about the choice of the second mile.

If someone forces you to go the extra mile, that’s great that you went further, but you weren’t motivated to do it. They were. And it’s not enough to grudgingly, spitefully or angrily go the extra mile either – because that isn’t the point.

The magic of the second mile is when we travel it without being demanded to do so. Bruce Barton (1886–1967) the American advertising executive is credited with the quote that “The big rewards come to those who travel the second, undemanded mile.”

Bruce was right. If our clients demand the second mile from us, they are the ones pushing for quality when that really should be our job. More than that, if we have to wait for external pushes in order to evolve, we’ll forever be at the mercy of the circumstances.

The key to the second mile is to demand it from ourselves. Leaders are made this way. Great parents are made this way. Anyone on a growth path of any kind demands this of themselves. The second mile simply isn’t a choice to someone who is pursuing excellence. It’s a demand they place on themselves.

Are you demanding your own second mile?
Chris

The challenge with the sales funnel is that there’s a design flaw and that flaw shows up in how it’s used. A normal funnel has us put things in at the top and see them come out the bottom. Names, relationships, and contacts go in the top, while opportunities, deals, and cases come out the bottom. This makes sense in many uses of a funnel but not when you’re talking about creating relationships.

A vertically oriented funnel relies on a force in nature that doesn’t help us in relationship-building. That force is gravity. When we’re creating a new relationship, gravity usually doesn’t help us and gravity will never be enough to get us new business.

In real life, the funnel is turned on its side and we have to keep putting something into it before we get something out of it. If we’re not diligent, things fall out of the funnel, and if we stop, it stops. There is no gravity working for us. In any relationship – business or otherwise – the funnel only moves because we moved it. Keep moving it.

Chris

The question is, what do you do about protecting it? Or more accurately, should you or can you protect it?

A friend of mine talks about IP all the time – he feels he has a lot of Intellectual Property. We jokingly call it TP (Thought Property, a.k.a. toilet paper because that’s all it should be used for), but he’s intense with the phrase, “that’s my idea”.

I’m curious, however, about the value of an idea. There’s a lot of room to argue this, especially in a world where Left-Brain thinking is commoditizing and Right-Brain work is where the money is. But at a larger scale, isn’t the value of an idea in its use and application? And if we protect it jealously, is it really creating any kind of value?

I’ve had work that I’ve done be used by others without asking, and have even had work that I did copywrited by others without so much as a conversation. I was frustrated (especially since I’m still waiting for them to have the courtesy to tell me they did it) but am ultimately interested in seeing good ideas become well-used ideas. Protecting it sounds great, but how be you just go use it to create real value?

The Economist recently was commenting on patents (idea protection tools) and cited a great statistic. In 2008, patent revenues in the US (excluding pharma) were $4 billion. Now, that’s a big number. But, the associated patent litigation costs were $14 billion. It would appear there’s a $10 billion margin to be made fighting about who owns an idea, rather than using the idea.

Come up with good ideas. Use those ideas. Be respectful of where ideas come from – and focus on the value that can come out of the idea, not out of the legal battle. I’ll share them if you will.
(I’ll share them even if you won’t!)

Chris

We’ll do this and this, and then everything else will take care of itself. Dangerous words, truly dangerous. Now, don’t get me wrong, I get the importance of doing the right things so that what follows will be easier.

But the simple fact is this: Things never take care of themselves.

I can’t think of a business I’ve owned or a client I’ve worked with where anything took care of itself, except perhaps for failure or apathy. Failure requires no plan and no energy – but success does. So the next time someone utters those words, “…and everything else will take care of itself” remind them that that’s what lots of average people say.

Chris Venn

But strategy isn’t a business concept, it’s a success concept that happens to work in business. For example, I was a participant and am now an Ambassador of the ENGAGE! London program that is part of the London Community Foundation. ENGAGE! London runs a six-month long program that helps equip people to be better board members of charitable organizations. Each month a different topic is covered and I was asked, along with my good friend Janet Frood, to deliver a session on how strategy and values link to philanthropy.

Schedules interrupted my ability to attend, but technology came to the rescue and here is the video that I was able to provide the participants that gives a context of what strategy is, how it works and some key practical elements.

Strategy isn’t just for the boardroom, it’s for wherever success is needed – and where better than in philanthropy.

Chris Venn

ENGAGE! London – Strategy & Philanthropy from Chris Venn on Vimeo.

If you think about “vision” as an example, sometimes we’ll hear that we have to “fill people’s vision bucket”. It reminds us to take whatever our vision is for the organization and then fill your team’s vision buckets so that they can carry that vision as well. Problem. The metaphor is incomplete.

Yes, I think there is a metaphorical vision bucket to be filled. The problem is that people forget that that bucket leaks.

If you want your team to really start to internalize and “get” your vision, it means that you have to constantly be filling their vision buckets – once won’t do it. The bucket leaks and as a leader, it’s your job to fill it over and over. It’s not always easy, but it’s yours to fill Liza.

Chris Venn