There was a time when sales department pep talks, employee rallies, motivating managerial sessions and corporate weekend getaways went something like this: Times may be hard now but just keep doing what you’re doing. Work hard, don’t give up; eventually things will get better. We will come out of this down time (together!) stronger in the end. In other words, demand for what we currently offer, how we currently offer it, will come back.

Rah Rah Rah and the crowd went crazy…kinda.

The effectiveness of perpetually doing whatever it was that we did yesterday in order to guarantee our continued future success tomorrow is quickly becoming, well,…ineffective.

We live in a world where demand for the old, boring and slightly unusable is nil. We interact in markets where doing the same thing over and over and over will not successfully endure. On the contrary, fortunately, we also live in communities where new, fresh and innovative ways of doing things are embraced and loved by an ever growing number. If you are exerting energy to maintain a status quo, trying desperately to solve problems and challenges from outdated and overused platforms, then you are going to disappear. You will be left where you currently are…in the past. We must be willing to embrace transition and change appropriately and accordingly, never sacrificing our values for a quick dollar or following, but always willing to change in order to get better and to help more people more efficiently and more effectively.

If you are (or quite probably now were) a newspaper company who believes you can just keep printing newspapers, and that eventually demand for your paper will go back up…you are going to lose. If you are a car company that believes it can keep manufacturing gas guzzling SUV’s, and that the demand for your vehicles will eventually go back up…you have already lost. If you are a small business that believes it can make do without an amazing website/blog, and that your customer base will continue to find you and use you regardless…you are going to lose. If you are a band who believes that your primary source of revenue over the next two years is going to be album sales, and that you don’t need to find a new creative way to generate cash…you should probably just stay in your parents garage.

Waiting it out until demand for your product or service comes back doesn’t work any more. Why? Because someone else out there is already figuring out a way to do what you do, better. Someone else is out there changing what you provide in order to make it easier and faster and more fun.

If we resist (aggressively fight!) change, then we are going to lose, and we are going to lose quickly. We must adapt. We must continually get better. We have to understand the ever fluctuating attitudes and desires of our followers, clientele, friends and co-workers, and we must evolve to meet them.

Embrace positive change, keep up with how it’s happening, leverage it to the best of your ability, come out of the hard times better than you were going into them.

I’m reading Tribes by Seth Godin and The Book of Acts from The Bible. Both of these books contain stories which pertain to amazing and courageous leadership and fighting the status quo in the face of adversity. I recommend them both for those who yearn to lead.

1. Beginnings and Endings.  Do not look at life as a series of projects or events or blocks of time involving categorized jobs or tasks.  Rather, understand that life builds on itself.  There are no endings and beginnings, only learning from today and building upon it in order to improve your tomorrow. Example:  The end of a college career is really only a commencement (beginning) to the rest of a students life.  A student very rarely learns everything (or even close to everything) that he needs to know for a career (or life) in the classroom.  A student is mainly learning how to learn. Important so that throughout the rest of their life, they can continue to learn adeptly and thoroughly whatever it is they may need to know or learn.  A so called ending to one event is genuinely just another continuation to the next great adventure.  Hence, don’t get frustrated when something seemingly ends or begins.
2. Do you act boldly in your beliefs?  Essentially, your beliefs and commitments and ideas require of you a level of zero courage if they are never tested by others who see things a little differently or completely oppositely.  Is it important to surround yourself with great, positive people?  Of course.  You become like those you surround yourself with.  BUT!…It is basically easy to believe what you believe and know what you know as long as you surround yourself with people who only believe and know as you do.  Your  beliefs and visions require zero courage to believe them if they are never tested.  It is easy to believe in something when you are surrounded by people who believe the exact same way.  Lesson?  Take the time to talk to, communicate with, interact with and join with people who see the world from a different and unique way.  Make sure your ideas are tested.  Does this mean you have to change what you believe?  Certainly not!  But, how can you expect your ideas or beliefs to grow stronger if you don’t put them through some testing or ridicule or run them by the critics?  Exactly.

If we ever expect our life or our company or our church or our relationships to progress to the next level; if we desire that our marriage develops into new realms of trust and love; if we ever expect to reach out and impact a broader market; if we want to put that latest great idea into action; if we want to be rich; if we want to help as many as possible; if we want to give it all away; if we want to decrease our negative environmental impact; then change is absolutely necessary.

Why did Facebook revamp its entire layout?  Why did WordPress totally turnover its Dashboard?  Why, when millions of people worldwide use your product or service every day, would you ever want to change a single thing!? Here is why:  They want to get better.  Why did Steve turn machine Mac into musical Apple?  He knew that in order for the company to grow (to be the best in the world!) it had to change, to be the change.  Why does Google come out with a new application almost daily (or so it seems)?  They realize that in order to stay on top, they must keep doing what got them there in the 1st place:  promote and initiate change.  Every year these companies change the way we do and see everything.

Want to get better at anything?  Get better at being willing to change.  Want to become a Visionary?  Train yourself to see the change before it happens and take advantage of it.

That is, until our eyes were opened to the truth of the matter.  The reality was, that due to the FREE ticket advertising, every single male within an hours drive showed up every Thursday night.  What’s the problem you ask?  First: Extremely crowded slopes, almost to the point of not being able to move comfortably down the mountain.  Second: The overcrowding caused the lift lines to back up so far that the wait to get up the mountain was longer then the time it took to actually board down the mountain.  Third: We were surrounded by hundreds of dudes!

Still, we believed for quite some time that the FREE ticket made it all worth while.  However, one afternoon we decided to venture out to another mountain (Sugar), one that wasn’t FREE, but a great mountain none the less.  I paid $17 for my ticket and went on the same day (Thursday) that the FREE event was being held at Beech.  What was the comparison you ask? First: We had the mountain practically to ourselves (everyone else was boarding for FREE!).  Second: We made 5 times as many runs at the place that made us PAY as compared to the one that was FREE.  Third, the place that made us PAY was actually closer in distance, saving us even more time and more money.  We had nearly unlimited space, and we never dealt with the lines, crowds or the uneasiness of  being surrounded by hundreds of dudes.

What is the lesson?

• Just because it’s FREE doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best deal.
• Don’t settle for the FREE average…being average is almost always FREE.  Instead, pay for VALUE.
• Your time is not FREE.  If you could pay a little to have a lot more time (and fun!) wouldn’t you?

Here is the challenge: Many visionaries, no matter how self-motivated (or whatever), never get their start-up…well…started up!  Blame it on, if your must, a lack of focus.

The new visionary, leader and entrepreneur all know that they can impact their community, city, state, country and world in a drastically positive and unique way.  They know (and believe!) that they can do something great.  They have the initiative, the proper attitude, the enhanced heart, the high flying mind set, the proper hair cut (what?).  In short, they have what it takes to really make a difference through their actions, business and perspective.  Yet for some reason they just can’t put it into MOTION.  Ever been there?

We are all either (1) looking to premiere our first great idea (2) looking to get our next great idea rolled out or (3) looking to improve our current great idea already on the market.  So how do we accomplish one or all of these things?  How do we set into MOTION that potential entrepreneurial energy which is currently stagnantly waisting away, not making money, not changing lives, not making someone else’s life better, in our revved up minds?  You know you possess the power to change lives, now how do you harness it and put it to use behind a great idea or goal?  Here are some questions and points to ponder in your search (Think, for real!):

1.  If you could be the greatest in the world at one thing what would it be?
   
2. If you had complete freedom of time, how would you use it?  
3. If you had all the resources in the world, what would you build, design or work at?
4. Take your answers from 1-3 and solidify them…write them down!
5. Your answers from 1-3 should reveal something deeper about yourself (your passions for example).  So go ahead and work at what your passionate about, what you really desire to do.  Make real plans to take a step toward making these answers a reality.  
6. Don’t take your life for granted.  Do that which you truly believe is worth doing, don’t make excuses.

I don’t know.  Why should I fill my brain with facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book?  -Einstein, in response to the question: how many feet are in a mile?  As taken from the book The Magic of Thinking Big

Maybe you are like me.  Maybe you spent 4 or 5 or even 6 years of your young adult life in a lecture hall, voraciously attempting to scribble down words onto a lined sheet of paper in hopes that later on that week you would be able to interpret what you actually wrote down.  Maybe you are like me, and you asked yourself, “Why am I doing this?”  

What we are taught in school is to push as much information, as many facts as we possibly can, into our overloaded, overworked brains.  We are then taught that those of us who are best able to keep those facts in our brain just long enough to spew them back onto a more formal piece of paper, called an exam, are the most successful of the group (class).  

What is wrong with this picture (or should I say reality)? 

For the majority of students, this way of learning and using our brains continues into the rest of our lives, leaving us with brains that function as mini-warehouse storage units rather than as well polished, active thinking machines.  Remember, (or learn for the first time) it is more important to use your mind to THINK rather than to STORE.  Most anyone with a higher education experience can store, but very few can actually think and process and create and imagine and…well, you are starting to get the picture.  

A fact storing person is only worth as much as the encyclopedia or Internet data base that he memorizes his facts from.  A thinking man or woman is a priceless asset.