Overheard at a recent private workshop

If you are a subscriber or regular reader of this blog, you’ll have noticed that the frequency of my blog posts has been reduced quite substantially over the past few years. I have refocused my time, effort and attention on my most elite, high performance clients – my Platinum Program Members. Since these are private workshops, you wouldn’t be aware they are taking place. I thought I would share with you a few quotes that were captured over the two days of discussions – the discussion themes included:

1. Determining the WHAT and WHY of difficult business decisions
2. Creating Winning Proposals
3. How to structure compensation plans, divisions and entities to achieve your corporate outcomes
4. Determining what you want and don’t want from your business
5. Business models – which one(s) should I choose?
6. Determine the WHAT and HOW of important business decisions
7. Preparing a business to be sold
8. Stakeholders – How to deal with them effectively
9. Project Management Principles – how to get them done on time and on budget
10. Work-life Balance – is it achievable or even realistic?
11. The Internet, the easiest thing that’s hard to do
12. Automating Your Business – how to leverage limited resources while producing maximum results

Some of the quotes captured during the workshop:

• The only crisis you will have in your business life is when you stop caring.
• Your singularity of focus in all dimensions of your life should drive you especially when the waters around you are stormy
• When you get conflicted internally – it’s because you’re unclear or unsure of the outcome you want to achieve
• Successful people were where you are now BEFORE they were successful.
• If you focus on what you don’t want you will attract more of it.
• Your self motivation is directly related to the level of satisfaction you have with respect to the reward you expect – within your decision-making horizon.
• There is always a cost of making a decision just as much as there is always a cost of NOT making a decision.
• FOCUS on the WHAT – your Reticular Activation Systems (RAS) will come up with the HOW (solution).
• You don’t publish blog posts for humans to read them – They are for the search engine (robots).
• Your integrity, congruency and authenticity have to be in alignment with your ultimate (life’s) purpose.
• The more components you can identify, value and communicate to your clients/staff the more valuable the proposition becomes.
• You need to demonstrate all the components of the value proposition so you are able to “discount” from the top line and maintain your needed profit margin.
• Separating the “what” from the “how” is how great decisions are made. Always start with the what and the how will take care of itself.
•  Don’t hope for things to happen – expect them to!
• How we are seen is how we are perceived.
• You must know what your outcome is, before you start to do anything, otherwise you are wasting time, money and/or effort.
• You must recognise who is supporting you (internally and externally) in your business to make sure they are justly rewarded and/or appreciated.
• Never oversell what you are providing, your belief and conviction will speak louder than you could ever scream.
• Everyone is begging to be led in at least one aspect of their life. Be that mentor, leader or inspiration for your clients, friends and family.
• Don’t think about failing, always see yourself succeeding.
• You must be able to substantiate a claim or value proposition to amplify the benefits.
• Never forget who you are doing this for. There has to be a purpose to your business investments (sacrifices). Otherwise you will lose faith, belief and motivation to stay the course.
• Inflection points are produced by a catalytic moment.  To take advantage of them you have to get the catalyst under your control
• When you get conflicted, where something isn’t right; the conflict is within you because you don’t know what you (really) want.
• We erode our destiny moment by moment through the decisions we take and the decisions we defer.
• The more components of the value proposition you can identify and quantify, the more compelling the case becomes.
• Each component of your value proposition has a cost and value, the more accurate you are in calculating (estimating) these, the more profitable and defensible your position becomes.
• Disintermediation means you have to become the glue that makes it work better than it did before.
• Your client or supplier’s calculator is different to yours. Their evaluation of the value proposition will be based on their calculator, not yours.
• The value proposition you are presenting might be too complicated for the person you are presenting it to. If they can’t work it out, you have to explain it, step-by-step.
• The more stakeholders you involve in your decision making, the more genuine and authentic you are, the more effective you can be in negotiating win-win-win outcomes.
• Considering all stakeholders’ vested interests should be an integral part of your process, not by letting them make the decision, but ensuring their vested interests are fully addressed in the final solution.
• The burden of the future should not prevent you from enjoying the present.
• The future should never be a burden, if it is – change it, now!
• The basis of your (current) thoughts is the result of your (previous) thinking.
• If you knew you could NOT fail what would you do?
• You should know the cross-road before you get there.
• Reconcile what you WANT versus what you NEED.
• It¹s not the client’s role to tell you what they want; it’s yours!
• You should NEVER complete your to-do-list. Only do the top 20% items because they give you 80% of your results and conversely the remaining 80% is a waste of valuable time because it only produces 20% of your results!
• Be decisive, don’t use tentative words like: but, or, maybe, might, could, should, hopefully, possibly, probably.
• If the reward is too far, you will probably give up on your dream. Create smaller goals to achieve that are closer in time, easier to achieve.
• Don’t hope, expect.
• There is no word for fortunate in French, only lucky. We are not lucky, we are fortunate to have the opportunities and choices – that we create.
• Prepare for the worst, but expect the best.
• Think different, not differently.
• Be authentic and genuine, never manipulative.
• When you come to the fork in the road you need to take it.
• If you believe, it will happen.
• If you’re not trying to do something out of the ordinary how do you know it’s not just ordinary?
• Vested interest is always how the other person sees it. If you can’t see it you need to take yourself outside of your way of thinking, think like they do.
• The more appreciation you have for outside-the-box thinking the better off you will be.
• When you are spiraling “stop it!”. You need to come back to the “what” not the “how”.
• Entrenchment is how wedded you are to the current way you’re doing things.
• As you second guess yourself, it lowers the value of your service or product.
• In sales, hunters are needed just as much as farmers.
• Singular focus is the key, but this doesn’t equal one thing for life!
• You’ve got to own who you are.
• Think through the complete set of scenarios before you start implementation.
• Prepare your business for sale 2-5 years before you want to sell it.
• The intimacy of the relationship with the stakeholders in your business
  will vary on their degree of involvement.
• The more stakeholders you have, the more leverage you can have.
• Figure out your timeline …. and start the clock.

If you read the lists and thought to yourself – WOW! That’s a lot of content! You’re right. All our workshops are value-packed, outcome-driven, results-focused. Platinum Program Members have no time to waste and want to get to the bottom line – YESTERDAY!

The Platinum Program is based on my unique coaching philosophy and mentoring methodology. It’s not for everyone, in fact it’s only for the most committed business people who “measure up” to an exceptionally high level of commitment and desire to achieve.

If you think you’re up to it and want a challenging environment that will hold you accountable to your goals (and dreams), contact us.