Let me drop the bottom line on you:

you’re going to become better because of the struggle.

It’s going to serve you better than anything else. That’s why it deserves a hug when most people want to push it aside.

Look at the stories we’re attracted to. Whether true or fiction. The most compelling stories involve a hero who overcomes severe adversity. But they’re not a hero until they stare down the adversity and refuse to lose to it.

Heroes hug it out with their struggle. And I want you to be a hero. So today it’s Monday, the start of a brand new week. I’m encouraging you to act heroically. You can do it, but you may have to shift how you view your struggle.

“Why me?” is a universal question people ask when things are hard.

What if we flipped it around though. If our potential hero status is determined by the struggle, why not instead make a declaration of gratitude, “Hello, Struggle. I’m happy to have you.”

It’ll sound ridiculous to some. It’ll resonate with a few. Very few. And I know why.

Not everybody has the stuff necessary to be a hero. Do you? Maybe it’s time to find out. Or maybe you already know.

Mostly, I suspect people know they’re not a hero and they live every day with doubt. Doubt they can do it. Doubt they can overcome. Doubt they can endure. Worry. Doubt. Anxiety. Fear.

Have you noticed that in every great hero story there’s courage? And in that courage, there is no victim thinking?

Heroes aren’t victims. They don’t see themselves as victims. Instead, they accept what’s happening and put their energy toward figuring out their best course of action. They’re always pursuing their ideal outcome.

Are you up for a fun challenge? Come on, go with it.

Think about a favorite hero movie. It can any that you really love. I’ll only put one restriction on this exercise. Make it a person. You don’t have to, but if you do it’ll be more powerful to help you I think. For instance, you could see Arnold’s character in the original Terminator as a hero. But he’s not human so there’s a bit of a disconnect. I don’t want there to be any disconnect.

If you’re having trouble figuring out somebody, then just think back to the last movie you saw. Who was the hero in the movie? Pick them.

They weren’t perfect even though they were the hero. For good reason. Every hero has to endure the struggle to figure it out. They sometimes get it wrong. Sometimes things go south in spite of the best efforts of the hero. No matter though because in the end, the hero wins. So will you.

It’s an endurance test. Success is always an endurance test.

Think about this character, your movie hero. Every single day you’re writing your own screenplay! YOU are the hero character. The exercise is to write that story the way you want it to turn out. Curveballs are coming your way. It’s fine. Better yet, it’s necessary. How are we going to know the hero is the hero is unless we see the hero overcome the struggle? That’s exactly what makes them a hero. That’s what will make you a hero, too.

Hugging it out with the struggle isn’t an embrace saying, “Don’t leave me. Don’t ever leave me.” Rather, it’s a hug of appreciation. Hugging it out with struggle is recognition that without it, you can’t learn, understand and grow. It’s the force that brings out your best. Struggle is the competing force that fosters your growth.

You’ll still have fear. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the determination to do what you need to do...

By now you’ve certainly figured out that leadership and entrepreneurial success rely on LEARNING. Achievement, accomplishment and success don’t happen immediately. They take time. Largely because we have to figure out what works. That means we spend time doing things that don’t work. No way to know until you try.

As we push forward to figure things out our learning increases. Knowledge piles up. And with it, we’re able to distill things down into a more clear picture. We see what won’t work, and we often see why. We find out what does work, and if we’re fortunate, we’re able to figure out why so we can replicate it. Otherwise, we just roll with it and embrace gratitude that good fortune smiled on us.

Knowledge can simply things because the more we know the more we’re able to distinguish between the essential and non-essential. Knowledge enables us to start eliminating things. It also gives us the power to become more efficient and effective.

“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.” – Bruce Lee

Your flashlight dies. You open it up and pop out the batteries, then you slide in a pair of new ones. You put the flashlight back together, but it won’t turn on. You open it back up, pop out the batteries and turn them around. Presto! Now the flashlight works. The batteries have a positive side and a negative side. They’re simple. And easy. But knowing which way they go makes it simpler. Put them in wrong, the flashlight won’t work at all. Put them in correctly and it’s as bright as it ever was.

Failure. Success.

Sometimes the line between the two is thin. Just another big reason why you need to be committed to learning. It makes everything simpler. It works!

Let’s talk about some practical applications for you and your business.

Hack away at the cumbersome. 

Look inside your business for processes that are cumbersome. We’ve all got things that are more difficult than they need to be. We instinctively know it. But sometimes we ignore it. Maybe we don’t want to take the time to wrestle with it right now. Whatever the excuse, jettison it. Take the time to hack it apart. It’s time.

A common area where cumbersome exists is in an extra step. Or more than one extra step.

Speed it key. Extra steps slow things down. Slow is cumbersome. Speed is lean.

Identify and eliminate the cumbersome. All of it. Rally the troops to help you. They will happily engage in helping you because these bottlenecks impact their lives every single day.

One battle cry that I’m fond of – and one I’ve used for years inside companies I’ve run is to challenge the team to make the company…

highly maneuverable

Cumbersome is the enemy of highly maneuverable. You won’t get any resistance from the people most negatively impacted by cumbersome processes.

Don’t make customers pay the price for simpler.

Know what customers want and need. Knowledge makes things simpler. Unfortunately, sometimes companies get into protection mode and make things more difficult because they’re afraid of being taken advantage of. Why should customers pay the price for your inability to make things simpler, or for your paranoia that somebody may take unfair advantage of you.

Some fast food restaurants don’t make napkins readily available. They give you a certain number of them with your order. Need more? You’ll have to ask. There are none to be had out in the restaurant.

What do you wanna bet that some brainiac at corporate figured out how much money could be saved by eliminating the ready availability of napkins to...

The following screen-shot is taken from the online definition at the Merriam-Webster website.

Without empathy, you can’t get to compassion. And without understanding, you can’t get to empathy.

You can be the boss without any of these, but you can’t be a leader.

The formula is pretty straightforward.

Be open and curious to learn because that feeds everything. Without it, you’re destined to get stuck. Growth demands it. Guage how curious and open you are to learn by listening. If that’s a problem, start working to improve that. My best advice is to urge you to consider the high price you’re paying to be the smartest person on the planet. Your ignorance is costing you greater success. If I were sitting down with you I’d be encouraging you to treat yourself better. Take advantage of the collective knowledge of others. Try harder to understand where people are coming from, and why they think the way they do. It doesn’t mean you have to convert, but growth, improvement, and transformation are positive things that will only happen if you commit yourself to learn and understand.

Remember my formula: LUG.

Learning + Understanding = Growth

Since we’re talking about leadership today, it should be obvious by now that you can’t be a leader (at least not an effective one) without growth. Leaders are dedicated to improvement. First, their own. Then, the growth of those around them. Invest in yourself. Make time to learn, understand and grow. Don’t make excuses. Make time.

I choose COMPASSION rather than EMPATHY because of those ideas you heard expressed at the Merriam-Webster website. This isn’t my first rodeo. I understood those differences many years ago. Empathy gets all the press though. Business people can get queasy when people start using words like love and compassion. We shouldn’t though because they’re really important words. They’re important actions!

That’s right, actions. They’re not merely touchy-feely things. I tire of people slamming emotions. “Don’t be so emotional,” they say. And they’re not referring to an emotional meltdown or an outburst. They’re just talking about somebody who expresses feeling something! It’s ridiculous.

Would you rather people felt nothing?

We have terms for that. At best, such people would be described as being apathetic. That is, they’re just filled with apathy. They could care less. It’s an appropriate term I think. Because such behavior is pathetic. A-pathetic.

At worst, we’d describe them as psychopaths. Is that what you want? To be surrounded by a bunch of psychopaths or people filled with apathy. Boy, that sounds like a high performing team, huh?

No, instead companies spend insane amounts of money to measure employee engagement. They spend seemingly less money to do anything about it, which has always baffled me – but that’s likely because the money is in the assessments. “See, here’s how you’re doing.” And we love data. Nevermind that we’re clueless how to make it go up. But I digress.

Employee engagement is largely driven by leaders capable of demonstrating compassion. It means employees don’t feel apathy. They’re not psychopaths. They’re emotionally, mentally and physically engaged in the work they’re doing. They feel something positive about who they are, and what they’re doing.

Compassion’s role is a top-down deal. It’s not bottom-up. That means YOU have to lead the way.

Don’t expect your team members to be engaged,

Yesterday morning our local sports talk radio station, 1310 The Ticket, had Troy Aikman on. When asked about the competitiveness of the NFL he said the Dallas Cowboys, with the same owner and GM for a few decades now, are puzzling because it’s unclear what they believe. A few years ago it was defense. Then it was the quest for a more explosive offense. Aikman said he believes the consistently top teams in the league have a philosophy, a set of core beliefs from which they won’t deviate. Teams like New England.

In recent weeks I’ve talked to you quite a bit about the importance of beliefs because I know they drive our behavior. What we believe – our core beliefs as Troy termed them – determine the choices we make and the actions we take.

It’s interesting to me the beliefs people hold, which are nothing more than assumptions. It’s like all those click-bait headlines folks read, and think are 100% true. People base their opinions, which morph into beliefs based on such nonsense. And it can be difficult to influence them to believe anything different. Misinformation must come with a little shot of close-mindedness on the backend.

Beliefs drive actions. Some choose to believe that when something is working good enough, then it’s alright. Leave it alone. No need to improve it. Others of us (my hand is in the air) choose to believe that everything can be improved. I have an additional belief – it’s way more fun to pursue making it better than it is to sit back and rely on it continuing to work reasonably well. Status quo isn’t fun. Pressing to make things better is!

What do you believe?

The specifics of your business are always changing. Try keeping up with strategies and tactics. Impossible. People will always chase tools. Chasing tools is for fools. Chasing improvement isn’t.

But tools do improve things, you may argue. They can. But not necessarily.

Be careful what you fall in love with. The safe money bets on constant improvement. Sometimes subtle tweaks pay off big. Sometimes big projects backfire costing us thousands. Press for improved results. Don’t get fancy.

Find the speed bumps in your operation.

There are constraints in your business – those roadblocks, or at least those speed bumps that slow things down. Work is slowed down or stopped somewhere in your operation. Start looking for those. Identify them and figure out why it’s happening.

The first rule of business is to fix what ails you. But that’s an improvement. A major improvement.

Ask your people where they’re stuck. Ask them why they’re stuck. “What are we doing that’s a royal pain your butt?”

It can be something as innocuous as people having to enter a customer’s information twice during some transaction. When you call customer service did you ever wonder why the agent needs your name and account or pin number or phone number, then minutes later they need to ask for your phone number again? You know why? Their system is asking for your phone number in two different areas because their leadership is too inept to figure out they need to change that. They need the system to auto-populate the second phone number field with the first input. But nobody is paying attention. So day after day the poor agents are stuck asking customers for their phone number, then minutes later they have to ask for it again. You don’t think that agent is going to memorize your phone number, do you? Hello, speed bump. How are you today?

It may as major as some safety issue that nobody is watching. Until some disaster happens. Don’t wait for that.

Go hunt down these issues and problems. None are too small. Find them all. Don’t stop looking. When you think you’ve found them all, start over again. It’s like cycle counting inventory. You’re never done. Commit to the effort.

You won’t fix them all at once. Vet them. Figure out the ones that absolutely must be fixed pronto. Things like safety, customer experience and others should get top billing. Things like idiotic processes that take longer than necessary can come later. But get to them all. In quick order.

Communicate to the people what you’re doing. And why. Get the dialog opened up and keep it open. Ask better questions as time goes on. People are going to be reserved or whiny. Drill down to get the best intel possible. You need to know exactly what’s broken or not working as well as it should.

Find out where unintended consequences are killing you, too. You think companies are intentionally making their agents ask for your phone number twice in a conversation? No. They’re just not paying attention and somebody made it a necessary field to proceed without realizing it had already been asked and answered.

Stop being stupid.

“Next man up” is a commonly used phrase in team sports and the military. A variety of implications are in play. For starters, everybody is replaceable. But more importantly, the success of the team, the unit or the organization hinges on having people ready and capable of filling a space once occupied by a contributor. Otherwise, when one person goes away, or is absent, or leaves — then the gap goes unfilled. It speaks to the “bench depth” or the ability of an organization to have people in various stages of preparation to step up into a higher role. The show must go on!

Today I’m not so interested in how deep your bench is as I am in encouraging you to develop people. Invest in helping people become prepared to take their place and contribute more to the enterprise.

People are interested in contributing. Especially people ambitious enough to work on improving themselves. These are exactly the kind of people you want throughout your operation. If you don’t develop a culture that feeds their ambitions, they’ll go elsewhere. So this matter is important for today, tomorrow and ten years from tomorrow. Your present and future depend on it.

Without understanding your context I can’t possibly know what suggestions to specifically give you, but I can offer some general idea to help you figure it out for yourself.

Seek Understanding.

I’m starting here because it’s so obviously necessary. Too many people have their mind made up completely refusing to be open to having their mind changed. By anything. Including facts. Deeper truth. Or anything else. You know these folks. They’re the smartest people in every room they occupy.

You must understand your roster. Everybody on your roster. If you’re running a small team or a few direct reports, then it’s easy. If you’re directly responsible for dozens, or more, it’s more challenging. Meet the challenge by doing whatever it takes to get to know and understand the individuals on your team. If you don’t, then stop fretting about your bench depth. It’s not going to matter because the star players aren’t going to stay on your roster unless you’re whipping them with money. And good luck replacing them.

Understand what each person wants for their life. Not what you want for them. Not what you need from them.

You’ll be tempted to employ a single strategy with everybody. Don’t. They’re all different. You have to make adjustments based on their individuality. There’s no way to do that until you first know and understand each person.

Shut Up And Listen. Learn.

Your talent pool and the depth of it depends on your leadership. Your leadership depends on how deeply you care about your people. Each and every one of them.

Ask them about their life and what they most want. Then listen. It’s the path to understanding.

Demonstrate how much you care about them reaching their full potential. You want them to succeed. Don’t you? Their success is your success. Stop thinking your heroism is all about you. It’s not. It’s about them. All of them.

I’m preaching this message because your bench depth depends on it. Ignore figuring this out at your peril.

Plan.

Do it. Make one. Keep improving it. Don’t assume you’ve got it figured out once and you’re done. Things change.

Put in the work to plan. Create a plan. Focus on what you’ll do if somebody leaves.

Ask a CEO what she’ll do if her COO walks in this morning and says he’s going to step down.

Ask a business owner what he’ll do if his right-hand man walks in this morning and says he’s turning in...

Not everything can be fixed. Some problems have to be endured. Thankfully, loneliness doesn’t have to fall into that category. I believe it can be fixed. Better yet, I believe it should be fixed. We owe it to ourselves and the people who care about us to avoid falling into the abyss of hopelessness prompted by our loneliness.

Admittedly, there are many forms of loneliness. I’m not here to give you dating advice. I’d be more tempted to give you marriage advice. After 41 years of successful marriage, I’ve learned a thing or three. But it feels arrogant to go there. At least for today. So I won’t. Today I’m focused on professional loneliness. The kind of loneliness we feel when we’re operating our business, or leading our team and we feel all alone in the effort. There is a fix for that. More than one.

Understanding The Context

This is a universal problem with loneliness. Finding and connecting with people who really understand.

Watch and listen. To others. To yourself.

Isolation, even professional isolation, can become an easy habit to maintain. I’m reminded how late last year actor Jim Carrey talked openly about his intentional isolation.

Sometime earlier a quote made the rounds, attributed to Carrey.

“Solitude is dangerous. It’s very addictive. It becomes a habit after you realize how peaceful and calm it is. It’s like you don’t want to deal with people anymore because they drain your energy.”

I tried to find out if he indeed did say or write it. I don’t honestly know, but I remember it got my attention. On a number of levels.

For starters, isolation can be dangerous. It’s not necessarily dangerous. We all need some time alone. Introverts need more of it than others. I know because I am one. I’m that rare personality that is introverted, but I appear extroverted. For me, it’s about energy. I have to intentionally withdraw and embrace some isolation in order to recharge myself. It’s not long-term sustained isolation though. And I know when it’s coming, or when I need to do it. That’s because too much interaction with too many people drains me emotionally and mentally. And physically.

For some, isolation may be more dangerous than for others. So it goes with the addictive nature of isolation. I’m sure for some of us this quote is true, but I know other people who would find it nearly impossible to enjoy isolation, much less to become addicted to it. One size won’t fit all. Which is why you constantly hear me admonish you, “You’ll figure it out.” As always, I’m here to help, but in the end…each of us must make up our own mind, and determine to do whatever it is we think is best.

For me, isolation can be peaceful and calm, but it can also – depending on what’s happening with me – be chaotic and filled with anxiety. It depends.

So here’s the deal. YOU have to understand YOU. And that may be the toughest order of the day. Self-awareness is very, very hard for most of us. We have a view of ourselves, but it may be inaccurate. Even grossly inaccurate. The best way to know the truth is to get various outside perspectives. How do others see us? It’s all part of unearthing the context necessary to understand ourselves better.

Loneliness isn’t determined by a majority vote though. We alone determine it. We feel how we feel.

Loneliness isn’t determined by the presence or absence of people either. We can be in a crowded room and be very lonely. We can be married and sleeping right next to our spouse,

Confession: I’m really tired of hearing people bally-hoo happiness. “I wanna be happy. Don’t you wanna be happy?”

Don’t get me wrong. Yes, we all want to be happy. But happiness is such a short-term objective. Nobody is happy all the time. Happiness isn’t even appropriate all the time.

The quest for happiness presupposes that it’s a higher value than any other feeling or emotion. It’s not. We need it, but we don’t need it all the time any more than we need sadness, or laughter all the time.

I begin talking about this because almost daily I encounter people lamenting how unhappy they are. They incorrectly think happiness is the goal and their failure to achieve it makes them miserable. More miserable than they might have otherwise been if they’d been reaching for something more appropriate. The result? Disappointment and in many cases, increased loneliness.

Social media, smartphones, and the Internet are part of a grand irony – we’ve never been more connected to more people more hours of a day, but many of us have never been so lonely!

I bring up happiness because it’s such a culturally imposed pursuit – be happy – that we’ve collectively fallen for it. We think it’s a worthwhile pursuit. Maybe THE pursuit we should be aiming for.

People chase it. The other day I was reading about how people are buying clothing from online retailers and returning it. Turns out, many people are buying clothes they can’t afford, putting them on, taking photos for their Instagram, then returning the clothes.

Hypocrisy. Fronting. Faking it.

What makes us happiest and content in life? Is it stuff like clothing or fancy cars or big houses? Nope. Is it more followers on Instagram? Or more listeners to our podcast? Or more subscribers to our YouTube channel? Nope. Nope. Nope.

Surveys overwhelmingly show that friends and family are the real prizes. Even though our need to connect is hardwired, some of us are always alone. Conversely, some people who are surrounded by others, still experience deep and pervasive loneliness.

So what are we doing? We’re faking happiness and it’s making us more deeply dissatisfied and unhappy!

Entrepreneurship is being held up as the end all, be all. It’s the path to happiness. Quit that 9 to 5. Ditch that job career. Start your own thing. You don’t have a side hustle? You’re a moron, a loser. Entrepreneurship is about spending 90% of your time working, chasing, pursuing, hustling. Sleep 4 hours or less, then work, work, work. It’s what all the cool kids do. Don’t you wanna be cool? Don’t you wanna be able to call yourself an “entrepreneur?” What’s wrong with you?

Then, there’s YOU. And me! People out here doing real stuff. Every day. People churning out the work, making payroll, managing inventories or manufacturing, managing budgets, putting out fires, building cultures that will perform at the highest level we can possibly influence. Some days we eat the bear, and some days the bear eats us.

We’re surrounded by employees, suppliers, stragegic partners, customers, and prospects. But we’re very lonely. Often feeling like we’re serving everybody, but nobody is serving us.

Sometimes we feel guilty because we feel that way. So we power through it. But it’s still there.

The loneliness.

I saw that posted online this past weekend. I laughed, but the more I thought about it the more I realized how true it is. And I don’t mean the $5 million part. Sure, that’d be nice, but the encouragement would be terrific, wouldn’t it?

“All of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”   – Tom Peters

Do you agree? That marketing is your most important job as a CEO/entrepreneur?

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.”      – Seth Godin

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”       – Jeff Bezos

Branding works exactly the same way those stories work – the ones you can create versus the ones you let your employees create. People are forming opinions about you no matter what. So if you’re not branding yourself and your company, then others are doing it for you. Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Jack Welch.

What is marketing anyway?

Google it and you’ll find 9.7 BILLION results.

Getting someone who has a need, to know, like, trust, contact and refer you. That’s as good a definition as I’ve seen. Some add a step between contact and refer, BUY. I omit because you can achieve effective marketing without ever making a sale.

In 1995 a book was published, Up The Loyalty Ladder by Murray Raphel and Neil Raphel. I bought the book when it was first published even though I’d never heard of this father/son combo, but I read the book with interest. It distilled better than I ever could what I had always believed to be true. You can take a person from prospect to advocate without them ever becoming a customer. That’s the power of marketing.

Sometime around 1982 I had developed a marketing circle, not a ladder. I drew it out and regularly talked of it with the salespeople of the company I was running at the time. It was a common sermon I preached often.

I was running a retail company so I began with the shopper. First, there’s the general public. All the people out there who we think may need or want what we’re selling. But people have to self-select. They have to figuratively raise their hand and declare, “Hey, you’re talking to ME.” For our purposes those were shoppers.

Shoppers became prospects whenever we came in contact with them. I’d use tire shopping to illustrate the point.

This morning, somebody is going to get in their car and the last thing on their mind is shopping for tires. Their tires are fine. Or so they think until they have a blow-out on the way to work. Now, suddenly they’re shopping for tires. If we’re operating a tire store we don’t know anything about their shopping until they contact us. When that happens, they’re now a prospect (short for a prospective customer). It means they’re a potential buyer.

Just here I’d interrupt my sermon and draw a line connecting PROSPECT to ADVOCATE. I’d get puzzled looks, but explain with a true story.

It was a grand opening of a new location. I was walking about the showroom floor. Greeting people. Watching and making mental notes. I stepped behind the cash counter. An elderly gentleman walked up to the counter. I asked how I might be able to help him. In his hand was an automobile fuse. “Do you sell these?” he asked. “No, sir,” I replied. “But let’s see if we can find you some help.”

This was umpteen years ago when everybody had a Yellow Pages. I knew of a nearby gas station that had a mechanic on duty. I’d never done business with them, but they had a good reputation as an honest place fo...

Faith is a female entrepreneur in a male-dominated industry, drywall. She comes from a long line of tradesmen. Both grandfathers. And her own dad. She’s accomplished in the trade specializing in high-end residential construction, but she’s also an accomplished business operator. She knows her stuff. But she’s struggling with something she thinks should come more naturally. Celebrating when her company achieves a victory.

“It just feels fake,” she confesses. “I’m just not the cheerleader type.”

It’s not uncommon. Many leaders and business owners don’t know how to celebrate victories. It’s like everything else. You have to learn how so don’t shy away from figuring it out. Let’s talk about some things you can consider.

You don’t have to be the birthday clown!

Too many entrepreneurs endure the pressure of being the birthday clown of the celebration. Get that out of your head. You’re not the focal point. Nor are you the entertainment. You’re the leader, responsible for making sure the celebration happen. You’re the leader, the one leading the parade to show gratitude to the troops for achieving victory.

You likely had birthday parties thrown by your mom when you were little. Your folks did the work. They showed they loved you. And okay, maybe your dad dressed up like a clown. So nevermind.