Okay, this is a little embarrassing. Normally, I don’t like to talk about myself or toot my own horn. Well, at least not more than once or twice an hour and not in front of more than 100 people. But in this case I’m sort of trapped by the topic I’m writing about, which is “Your Personal Elevator Speech.”

Recently, in our Daily Fix column, I wrote about how you can leverage your hard-wired responses to your own name to increase the positive effect of your personal elevator speech on your psyche. You can see that post here. But we all understand things better when we can see examples, so I thought I’d share a personal elevator speech I wrote a few weeks ago when I was trying to get my ass moving on a project and having some doubts about whether I would be able to get through it.

I have to warn you, it’s nauseatingly positive. You can hate on me in the comments if you want, but keep in mind the purpose of the speech – it’s for me to tell myself in moments of self-doubt, and to leverage the sound of my own name. Here’s goes:

“Nick, you are smart, hard working, and successful. You can do anything you put your mind to. You know how to team up with creative and productive people, Nick, and how to get the best from them, and this time will be no exception. You entered law school on a bet, became an editor on the law review, and graduated with the top students in your class. You opened the Japanese Martial Arts Center after putting together a group of investors and built it to 100 adult students in record time. Nick, starting with a list of suggestions from your friend Don Prior, you learned the SEO business, mastered it, and now you have a successful SEO business that provides a really valuable service to business people all over Southeast Michigan. You’ve written five books, Nick, including 101 Ideas to Kick Your Ass into Gear that you co-wrote with Ian and Budo Mind and Body which made Black Belt Magazine’s list of Essential Gear. Nick, remember all the great things you’ve done, and how you set out with passion and determination. You can do anything you put your mind to, Nick, and this latest project is no exception. Nick, now is the time to get started!”

That’s it. You know that funny feeling you get when you address yourself by name? That’s your nervous system responding from a very deeply programmed place, just like it did when your parents said your name when you were about to be punished, or when your lover coos your name in the candlelight. It’s a very powerful tool, and it can help you remake your self image. Use it wisely, and it will help get you to a place where you can do anything you set your mind to!

Each week for the next few months, Ian and I will be riffing on a theme from our recently published book 101 Ideas to Kick Your Ass Into Gear. This week’s theme is “Tell Your Story”

The cool thing is, doesn’t that sound a lot like play? When kids love something, they just dive in and start doing it. And they learn like crazy! I watch my kid playing with the other kids on the playground and they all just jump in into any new activity with both feet. They’re in it completely, and they’re having fun. When they stop having fun, they switch to something else. But sometimes they come away from a new activity with a completely new ability, even though they were simply focused on doing it, and having a great time.

Most of us adults think we have to work with a purpose in mind, but maybe we just have to remember what it was like to play. Have faith that new insights will occur, and immerse yourself fully in your chosen life’s mission.

But after much figurative and literal head and hand bashing, we hit upon the keen idea of simply exchanging emails with the simple topic heading “One Thing I know about ….” Each person states in 2 – 4 sentences a single concept found in our activity, in as simple language as he is capable of using. When the others read that email, they respond to all with another single, simple idea. And so on.

Using this method, we’ve already come up with a rather long list of core concepts. In a month or two, we’ll organize the entries, edit them, and decide whether they make sense as a manual for our art, or if we need to take other steps to sharpen them or make them more useful for our potential readers.

Do you have any tasks that could be conveniently dealt with using this email method?

What I mean is that we should all find out what approach works best for us, and for most of us, including myself, contrast is at least as important as consistency. Use whatever approach works best for the personality of the task at hand. If you always work with no expectations, you indeed just might get what you expect! But if you work with low expectations when the challenge is great, it may help you get through the tough work of doing one incremental task at a time without stressing about achieving the greater goal right away.

When the goal is in sight and it takes a big dose of motivation to push through to the end, that might be a great time to have high expectations. And when you absolutely at all costs have to get though the stack of to-do notes on your desk, even though they don’t significantly help you get closer to that lofty set of lifetime goals you set for yourself during that visualization session with the Tarot reader, that might be a good time to dig in with a ginormous pot of Paul Newman’s French Roast Coffee, get to work, and have no expectations at all!

Thanks to the wonderful and talented Jean Stranquist for providing the inspiration for this post!

I’ve been reading Mastery Through Accomplishment by Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan. The essence of his message was the surprisingly Gecko-like statement that “The secret of life is the desire to attain something; the absence of this makes life useless.” Now, I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve been sold a bill of goods! Seems like all my life people in positions of religious authority have been telling me to give, sacrifice, and put aside all thoughts of earthly attainment. Khan, on the other hand, says that holiness, such as it can be achieved in human form, can be reached through pursuing your chosen mission with passion, discipline, and a drive for perfection in action. As an inveterate entrepreneur, I can definitely get behind that idea!

“Mastery is not only a means of accomplishing the things of the world, but it is that by which a person fulfills the purpose of his life. It is not necessary for man to leave all the things of the world and go into retreat. He can attend to his business, to his profession, to his duties in life and yet at the same time develop this spirit in himself which is the spirit of mastery.”

What is your mission? Your chosen path to mastery?

Last night I spent three hours in one of the most intense workouts a human being can experience. In the first hour, with several of my most senior black belts in judo, we carefully and exhaustively practiced a single judo throw until our minds were engaged in every detail and our bodies were able to perform them with precision. In the second hour, three of us who collectively represent over 80 years experience in judo, engaged in sixty minutes of sparring (called “randori” in judo) in two minute rounds (that’s 20 rounds for the mathematically challenged!). In the final hour there were four advanced black belts in the art of iaido (Japanese swordsmanship). We played a “game” in which we spar with wooden swords, with no other armor than a pair of safety glasses. We sparred with one opponent, we sparred with two opponents, and in some cases we fought against three!

A funny thing happened along the way. In spite of the fact that all of us are intensely competitive, when we passed the point at which our energy started to wane, each of us stopped fighting with strength and began to attempt techniques with a kind of abandon – not trying to “win” but simply to participate in an extremely high-level interaction in which one of the opponents gets thrown or touched with the sword.

Overwhelm the Analytical Mind

The whole process had a very specific purpose – to overwhelm the analytical minds of the participants and get them into a state called “flow.” This state arises from situations in which the complexity and energy level of the exercise is at or just slightly beyond the ability level of the players, keeping them engaged, slightly off balance (both mentally and physically), and completely focused on the moment. If you want a very thorough explanation of the concept of “flow,” check out the book with that title by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (no, I can’t pronounce it, either).

Achieving Flow

To achieve flow, there are a few things you have to have in place. Essentially,

• An activity you care about

• An ability to perform that activity at least at a fundamental level

• A willingness to engage in that activity for a sufficient period of time

• A way to increase the complexity, speed, or intensity of the activity

This probably sounds repetitive, but the way we try to achieve flow at the Japanese Martial Arts Center is to get students warmed up, get them to rehearse their fundamentals, and gradually increase the complexity, speed, or intensity of their practice. It’s a very reliable system because both the body and the mind are involved, and the dojo (“practice facility” in Japanese) is a predictable, safe place to explore dangerous or unfamiliar concepts. Our advanced students, especially our black belts, learn to engage in this routine until reaching a state of flow is almost automatic.

You get both fun and profit

There are two main reasons we seek to put ourselves into a situation where flow can occur: (1) the state is inherently enjoyable, and (2) more profound, rapid, and permanent learning takes place when in a state of flow than in any teaching situation we know of.

I really recommend you read the book FLOW that I mentioned above, but if you can’t, you should know that flow is inherently enjoyable because it is all-encompassing. When you’re focusing completely on an activity, you’re not worrying about what happened yesterday, you’re not worrying about what will happen tomorrow, and you’re not concerned about whether you have more or less money or social status than other people. You’re not seeking happiness in flow, you’re experiencing it, or at least you’re experiencing the complete lack of concern about it. Once you’ve experienced flow a few times, you’ll find yourself seeking it for its own sake.

Learn like a banshee

For the same reason that flow is so enjoyable – the fact that it’s all-encompassing – it is also an extraordinary state for learning. When your analytical mind cannot interfere with the process of experience, the information flows (so to speak) directly into you on a deep experiential level. You react to inputs without thinking, which means, I suggest, that you’re reacting with your nervous system and your sub-conscious mind. When the sub-conscious mind sees, hears, and reacts, it seems to retain a very deep impression of the interaction. You may not be able to explain what you did, but you still did it.

But because flow can only be experienced when the level of complexity or involvement in an activity is at or near your peak capacity, you have to increase the challenges of your peak state exercises as you get better. Here’s a restatement of that idea that helps to show what’s so cool about that:

(1) the state of flow is so rewarding, most of us will seek it for its own sake;

(2) experiencing the state of flow tends to create profound, rapid learning;

(3) the profound, rapid learning we get from acting in a state of flow adds greatly to our abilities;

(4) because achieving a state of flow requires that the challenges are at or near the limit of our abilities, we have to increase the challenges we build into our system for achieving it; and so

(5) we get engaged in an inherently rewarding activity that requires a continuous increase in complexity and ability.

Get Thee behind me, limits!

Of course there are limits to how fast you can progress. In athletic activities like judo, the speed and power of the techniques can create danger. In scientific endeavors, the requirements for proving your theories can outstrip the existing technology. In business, your market or your co-workers may not be ready to accept the revolutionary ideas you come up with when you’re in a state of flow. But every time you take the steps necessary to get yourself into this state, actually get into it, and spend time there completely absorbed in what you’re doing, you’ll get happier, better at something you love to do, and move yourself closer to mastery. That really kicks ass.

Remember those history lessons in school, when we learned about Lewis and Clark, the team of explorers who endured unimaginable trials to travel from the Eastern side of North America all the way to the Pacific Ocean? There were hundreds of settlers who followed them, but when the settlers found a fertile valley or an abundant prairie, they stopped, built a home, and found a way to wrest a living from the land. Being first would have given Lewis and Clark an incalculable advantage, but there was something about the way they defined themselves that didn’t let them stop and put down roots.

There’s two kinds of people in Business Land

Are you a settler? Do you find it comfortable to buy a franchise or a system created by a previous adventurer in your line of business? Or are you an explorer? Do you struggle with the idea of adopting pre-packaged business systems? After several decades in the Business Land, I’ve noticed that there are two kinds of people in our world – settlers, the kind who can happily plug away within the rules and networks created by other people, and explorers, the kind who simply have to find their own path no matter how much more difficult or financially challenging that might be. Though I don’t say it with either pride or shame, I can say with certainty that I fall into the latter group.

Because my life is a whole lot happier since I accepted the fact that I can’t get passionate about a path that’s already been blazed, I thought I’d share a few thoughts about how to get comfortable if being an explorer is just the way God made you!

And let me get this out of the way right at the beginning of this little soapbox speech – I don’t believe that one way is inherently better than the other. I have a bunch of friends who have bought existing businesses, franchises, or business systems, and many of them are doing very well. In fact, most of them seem to have a lot more free time than I do. The thing is, I don’t really know if that’s because they’re running systems that are designed to be run in only 50 – 60 hours a week or because I’m running or helping to run seven businesses* and my average work week is about 90 hours. But, as my accountant likes to say, I have “entrepreneurial ADD.”

* Just for the record, the businesses I’m involved in are as follows: the Japanese Martial Arts Center, the Law Office of Nicklaus Suino, the South Side Business Association, SEO Ann Arbor, the Shudokan Martial Arts Association, Ivanhoe Apartments, and Master and Fool, LLC, the company that owns this blog, thewellnessaddict.com.

Everybody explores, but not everybody’s an explorer

By the way, one way NOT to tell if you’re an explorer in the land of business rather than a settler is by how much business education you consume. The most successful business people I know, regardless of their “Biz-O-Type,” are rabid consumers of books, seminars, videos, and classes. They are constant students of the game. But the settlers, the folks who can find a program, adopt it, and make it work, seem a lot better at simply digging in and getting to work using the information they’ve found.

Those of us who are doomed to be explorers, try as we might, seem unable to accept the idea that somebody has already explored the region we’re in and mapped out the best way to get around. We simply have to explore it for ourselves. If there’s a fort built on the highest hill in area, we’ll look for another hill. If there’s a road from one valley to another, we’ll take a detour through the woods.

The thing is, most explorers I know have experienced a lot of angst about the fact that so many of the settlers are making a better living than they are and seeming to have an easier time doing so. I’ve experienced this same angst, but at 50 years old, I’ve gotten past that, and along the way I figured out a couple things about it. One is that though you CAN change who you are, it’s usually a lot better for you to live a life in accord with your true nature. The other is that, once you embrace who you are, you’ll waste a lot less energy trying to act like a settler, and that energy can be put to good use in exploration.

You might be an explorer if …

Regardless of which type you are, if you’re entrepreneurial you’ve certainly experienced the intense feelings of hopelessness and boredom when you worked as an employee. However well paid you might have been, you’ve no doubt had to practically stab yourself in the tenderloins with your breakfast fork to get yourself to go to work. I recall thinking at those times something along the lines of “this is really stupid and I just can’t get myself to do it.”

If you then quit working for others, as many of us have, you may have found some really well written business systems and tried to adopt them. Most settlers I know have successfully adopted all or part of many pre-existing systems. Besides being incredibly generous with their knowledge, they are happy to tell you “this is really smart and you should do it, too!”

But the explorer, who has not only quit working for others but has seen many of the same business systems as the settler, and often many, many more, just can’t seem to get excited about those systems long enough to put them fully into practice. Their response to some really terrific pre-existing opportunities, even when they completely understand the benefits, is something like “this is really smart and I just can’t get myself to do it.”

Hey, some of my best friends are settlers!

If you’ve had that experience several times, or many, many times, as I have, I’m here to tell you to stop agonizing about it, and recognize that you are probably hard-wired to be an explorer rather than a settler. It does NOT mean that you can’t be successful or that other people are inherently better business people than you are. What it probably does mean, however, is that you are going to have to find your own way in the world of business, so you might as well buckle down and start doing stuff. If you’re an explorer who’s not exploring, you’re acting like a settler, and the only thing you’re going to find on the road more traveled is hopelessness and boredom. You don’t have to abandon common sense, but you do need to see the possibility of new discoveries before you to keep you engaged and motivated.

And when you stop worrying about how the settlers are doing in the settlements, you can focus on your exploration. After all, if they were explorers, they’d be finding unexplored new territories instead of building ramparts around the forts in which they live. You need to keep your eyes on the horizon to see what’s ahead of you, and be able to recognize the beauty in the sunset beyond the next mountain range. And remember that sometimes being the first person to find a new valley can give you an incalculable advantage. Nobody says explorers can’t spend a little time figuring out how to help the first wave of settlers find their way to the valley. If the valley is beautiful enough, those settlers will be willing to pay handsomely for an accurate map!

Are you more motivated by charity than by greed?

I just finished reading a really interesting book. It’s called Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior The authors are Ori and Rom Brafman, and I highly recommend it. These guys make some surprising points about the way our irrational sides undercut our rational decision making. One part of the book that really stayed with me was about how altruism and avarice compete for our attention. Almost all of us are sometimes giving and sometimes greedy, and it’s really tough to be both at the same time.

They tell a great story about Switzerland, I think it was. The government wanted to store nuclear waste near a certain town, and they wanted to find out the best way to present it to the townspeople. So they commissioned a study that asked half the people a question designed to appeal to their altruistic side, and half the people a question designed to appeal to their avaricious side.

Radiation – It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

The first question was something like this: Your country needs a place to store nuclear waste, and we want you to help. Would you be willing to support your country by agreeing to let us store the waste near your town?

The second questions was something like this: Your country needs a place to store nuclear waste, and we want you to help. Would you be willing to agree to let us store the waste near your town in return for a payment of $2,500?

You might think a lot more people would want to get paid for the “privilege” of having nuclear waste stored nearby. But the truth is, the percentage of people who agreed when they were asked to volunteer in order to help their country was a lot higher than the percentage of people who agreed when they were offered money.

People are Basically Good …. Unless They’re Greedy

And the authors said that this kind of thing happens a lot. They talked about some studies that showed that when people make altruistic decisions, one part of their brains activate, and when they make decisions based on personal gain, a different part of their brains activate. They also explained that it’s almost impossible for both the altruism center and the avarice center to activate at the same time. And what’s really surprising is that altruism may be a better motivator than greed!

Would You Buy a Used Car to Save the Planet?

If this is true, it could have a profound effect on marketing strategies. Maybe if you’re a marketing expert you already know this, but based on what the Brafmans said, it’s going to be critical to make sure your marketing and sales materials appeal only to one side of your customers’ minds – either the giving side or the greedy side.  And if I’m right about this, your advertising dollar might be a lot better spent appealing to the giving side. I’m planning to do a lot more research on this idea, and I’ll try to write a column about it when I find out what data is available.

But here’s a point that’s a lot more important if you’re into personal development. You may be a lot “better” person that you think you are. Do you know if you’re motivated more by a good cause than by a good paycheck? Would an appeal to your inner St. Vincent de Paul be more likely to succeed than an offer to your inner Gordon Gecko?

When you Absolutely, Positively Have to Get Something Done

Here’s one way you might be able to find out – take some time to imagine a high-stakes situation similar to the nuclear waste example I pointed out earlier. Would you, really, truly, be more likely to agree to accept a risky or difficult situation if you thought you were helping out your country, your church, your family, or your company? When you put yourself in the shoes of the Swiss townspeople in the story who were offered money, did you do a mental calculation like I did … “Jeez, they want me to put myself, my family, and my neighbors at risk for a lousy $2,500. They’re gonna have to do a lot better than that!”

If you can figure out what approach works better for you, you’ve got a very powerful leverage tool for following through on personal development challenges. If there’s something you want to do or you’ve been meaning to do but just can’t get yourself started, why not take some time to figure out what would motivate you better to get started – personal gain or some benefit to your community. Take some time to write out a list of the reasons to do it and put the altruistic reasons in one column and the avaricious reasons in another column. When you can clearly see which column motivates you better, re-read that column several times. For each entry, visualize how it’s going to feel to attain the reward when you succeed. Make the visualization part of your daily routine, and I bet in a few weeks your desire is going to be very strong! I bet almost nothing will stand in the way of you taking the steps you need to reach your goal.

Remember – don’t just do something, DO SOMETHING! Get started today, pair up your goals with rewards that really get you passionate about achieving. And please let me know how it turns out for you. I think it’s going to be fantastic!

I got reminded of an important business concept this morning at a meeting with one of my young business mentors. His name is James Snider and he has great insight into all things business. If you want someone to review your business from beginning to end who can focus on the financials better than almost anyone I’ve met, get hold of James at On The Top Management.

Anyway, James and I were reviewing the website for one of my businesses, and we started talking about obstacles for potential new clients. He pointed out that you need to have a very clear idea of what action you want your web visitors to take, and that anything that slows them down or prevents them from taking that action should be gotten rid of. I couldn’t agree more, and if you want a really fun read on this topic, pick up Seth Godin’s book The Big Red Fez, which I’ve mentioned before. It’s all about making sure the monkey (your web visitor) knows exactly how to find the banana (the button or other action tool you want your visitor to push). But for now, let’s focus on getting rid of obstacles.

Let’s use the website for a martial arts school as an example. As a dojo (martial arts school) owner, I know I always want to show my visitors how cool our school is – our cool facility, our extraordinary instructors, our history, and the amazing techniques some of our people can do. But James suggested that most people who want to start martial arts probably have a lot more basic concerns.Some of the issues he suggested were:

How do I get to the dojo?

Is it hard to find?

I’m nervous about going in by myself.

What class should I go to watch?

Will it be scary?

If he’s right about these concerns, then all the pictures and video of cool techniques might actually work against us. Brand new people who visit the site would be frightened by dramatic throws instead of reassured by how easy and safe the dojo looks. And our research shows that he is right for most potential new students.

In the larger world of business, you can see this process get played out again and again. Auto makers who show their cars in racing scenes and who emphasize horsepower are targeting a certain segment of the car-buying market, but they are also missing out when it comes to appealing to car buyers with more pedestrian concerns. On the other hand, Saturn went a long way toward capturing the buyers who just wanted a reasonably priced vehicle without having to go through the haggling process. There’s also a lot to be said for car makers who offer an online ordering process – potential purchasers can assemble the car of their dreams, trying out different feature packages and paintjobs, and they don’t have to actually place an order until they’re quite sure of what they want.

Just about every business could benefit from this “get out of the way” analysis. James manages a very successful import repair facility in Ann Arbor, and they do a better job of making non-car people comfortable than just about any auto shop I’ve ever visited. At the same time, customers have to drive into what is unquestionably a repair shop, with all the attendant noises, smells, and rough looking guys with greasy hands. I know all the guys there, and they are very nice people, but a timid client might still be intimidated by the atmosphere. It’s just possible that if James could figure out how to make the place look and feel like a department store, he might win the business of the least car-savvy clients.

Anyway, a great thing to do for any business is to have an objective person look at your website and your client intake process and tell you about anything that seems confusing or frightening, or anything that takes customers away from the clear purpose of enrolling them in your sales process. You can then make a much more educated decision about where to focus your attention. I guarantee it!

I recently read Tell to Win by Peter Gruber, and I recommend it highly. It’s entertaining and it’s a great resource for learning how to tell your story effectively. But one of the points Gruber makes that is not only entertaining but really valuable is about making sure you use your time effectively.

The Monkey Story

In the 1970s, when Gruber was a young studio head at Columbia Pictures, he had a conversation with Jack Warner, the founder of Warner Bros. Warner had asked Gruber how things were going for him at the studio. The conversation is a fantastic lesson, so I’ll quote it word for word here:

Gruber: “It’s like a tidal wave. People just keep coming into my office with one problem after the other. It never ends.”

Warner said, “Let me tell you a story. Don’t be confused. You’re only renting that office. You don’t own it. It’s a zoo. You’re the zookeeper, and every single person that comes in the office comes with a monkey. That monkey is their problem. They’re trying to leave it with you. Your job is to discover where the monkey is. They’ll hide it, or dress it up, but remember you’re the zookeeper. You’ve got to keep the place clean. So make sure when you walk them to the door, they’ve got their monkey by the hand. Don’t let them leave without it. Don’t let them come back until it’s trained and they have solutions to their problem. Otherwise at the end of the day, you’ll have an office full of screaming, jumping animals and monkey shit all over the floor.”

What a great way to explain how to manage from the top! Remember, you’re the manager, not the actor, pipe-fitter, screenwriter, typist, whatever. So the point of the story, which I’m sure you get, is that to effectively manage, you have to be very careful what tasks you agree to do. Instead, you want to put people on the right track to solve their own problems, or put them in touch with other people who can help them.

Business is Even Faster Today!

Even though it’s a great point and a great story, I think it actually doesn’t go far enough. Business is much faster than it was even five years ago, so  we have to find ways to get things accomplished in a fraction of the time it used to take. You might work more hours, hire more employees, or contract out the tasks that take you away from leading your business. However, one big key, maybe the biggest, to getting your business as fast as it needs to be, is efficiency. You have to learn to get three things done in the time it used to take to do one thing. Here’s a helpful way to do just that, which was actually suggested to me by Ian, who also writes columns for thewellnessaddict.com and is a very smart fellow:

When someone comes into your office trying to unload their monkey on your desk, you should do more than just make sure they leave with it (I mean the monkey, not your desk)! Instead, find a way to send them away with one of your monkeys, too. Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean by this.

Learn to Say “Yes, But …”

The first example is kind of silly, but it’s simple and it works. My wife, Pam, and I move a lot. Poor woman, she supports me in all my business ideas, and helps me move from place to place when I start new businesses. I don’t know what I’d do without her. Anyway, almost every time we move we have a garage sale. Somehow every year or two we accumulate enough stuff to hold a three-day garage sale – I swear I have no idea how it all fits in our house.

So Pam has become an expert at unloading stuff quickly. When people come to our garage sales – and we advertise so we always have a lot of people – she engages them and talks to them about whatever items they are interested in. If they pick up a $20 item and ask, “Can you let me have this for $15?” she immediately says yes, but also says this, “I can give it to you for that price, but you have to find something else to take. How about this sugar bowl for $5?” They almost always leave with the item they want as well as one or two items that we probably wouldn’t have been able to sell except that Pam made it a condition of getting the item they wanted. They come for one item but they leave with two or three feeling like they got a great deal. We make a few more dollars and get rid of stuff that we don’t want to move.

Have Your To-Do List Ready

Here’s a more serious example for business. Review your to do list every day. Keep a mental note (or better still, write it down) of likely people to help you with each task on your list. Make a habit of imagining who might be able to work with whom (who said daydreaming is a waste of time?). That way, when one of those people comes into your office trying to unload their monkey on your desk, conjure up your list while they’re talking about their problem.

Once you’ve got a couple of tasks in mind that might fit them, and maybe a couple people they could work with on those tasks, you’ll be surprised at how often you can work out a way for them not only to leave with their own problem, but with one of yours, and how often solving one can help solve the other.

Try Giving Away Monkeys Today

I’ve written before about a guy who does contract work for me who came to ask for more money. His problem, as he saw it, was “not enough money.” He was basically asking for more hours and a raise. As it happened, I was thinking about ways to hand off more of my daily work to someone so I could concentrate more on marketing and strategy.

I did give him a small symbolic raise, but what I really did was point out the opportunities to do more within the projects we already had going together (sending him away with his monkey). I also gave him two of the tasks I was doing every Wednesday, freeing up about three hours in the middle of the day that were previously tied up (sending him away with one of my monkeys). I’m pretty pleased with the results – and I think he is, too – but I’m even more pleased that I was not only able to remember the lesson that Jack Warner taught Peter Gruber, but to improve upon it slightly.

That’s a great feeling in business – to accomplish something while remembering a lesson learned, and maybe learning something new from it. Being able to pass it on like this is also a great feeling. So, if there’s one point I hope you’ll take away from this post, it’s this one: Keep Your Dang Monkey, and Take One of Mine, Too!